Two Centers of Excellence of the Global Virus Network Independently Verify an Antimicrobial Technology That Kills SARS-CoV-2 on Surfaces for More Than…

The Doherty and Rega Institutes both used state-of-the-art high containment virology facilities to independently conduct extensive tests on a BIOPROTECT formulation by ViaClean Technologies to study its effects on SARS-CoV-2 infectivity on various surfaces. The standard ASTM E1053 test methodology was adapted to assess SARS-CoV-2 viricidal efficacy of microbicides on environmental surfaces. GVN scientists at the Doherty Institute under the direction of Prof. Damian Purcell, and at the Rega Institute under the direction of Prof. Johan Neyts, definitively demonstrated that the BIOPROTECT formulation eliminates SARS-CoV-2 by both reducing its ability to be infectious and by destroying its genomic material.

Our studies on numerous antiseptic agents for surfaces contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 show that the BIOPROTECT formulations long-lasting activity is far superior to conventional decontamination agents in general use, said Prof. Damian Purcell, Head of the Molecular Virology Laboratory in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at The University of Melbourne. The Doherty Institutes comprehensive report is expected to be available next week.

The tests were conducted in both wet and dry conditions. In the wet test, SARS-CoV-2 was coated on stainless steel disks which were then treated with a wet solution of the BIOPROTECT formulation. In the dry test, the BIOPROTECT formulation was first applied to stainless steel samples which, 46 days later, were then exposed to a high titer of SARS-CoV-2. Proving the longevity of the BIOPROTECT formulation on treated surfaces, tests revealed that the presence of the BIOPROTECT formulation maintained the ability to inactivate SARS-CoV-2 to negligible levels. Furthermore, test results from Rega demonstrated that the disks pretreated with the BIOPROTECT formulation averaged a 99.7% inactivation of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. All tests conducted were designed to conform with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and equivalent standards of regulatory agencies in Europe and Australia, to ensure the acceptability and credibility of the results.

We tested BIOPROTECT formulation and found that it eliminated 99.7% of the SARS-CoV-2 present, 46 days after the tested material was treated with BIOPROTECT formulation, said Dr. Johan Neyts, Professor of Virology at the Rega Institute for Medical Research, KU Leuven. This product is unique and its long-lasting ability to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 far exceeds conventional disinfectants, which makes it very helpful in the battle against COVID-19. The Rega Institutes report is accessible here.

The results of the tests conducted by the Doherty and the Rega Institutes clearly demonstrate that BIOPROTECT eradicates SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces and provides continuous residual antimicrobial protection for an extended period of time, said Dr. Brchot. It is clear that effective antimicrobials will be extremely important in containing the COVID-19 pandemic, given the time it will take to implement mass vaccination and fully develop novel therapies. In this context, we are not aware of any microbicide surface treatment that continuously prohibits the growth and surface transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 for an extended period of time. This represents a significant breakthrough in inhibiting the spread of COVID-19 by preventing surfaces from being contaminated by the virus and stopping the spread of the virus through contact with contaminated surfaces. Identifying and exploring innovative solutions, as well as fostering and facilitating collaboration between academic and industrial partners, be it large pharmaceutical firms or small biotech companies, is one of several ways the GVN can make a consequential contribution to the fight against COVID-19.

GVN Also Advances The Concept Of The Oral Polio Vaccine As A Preventive Measure Against SARS-CoV-2

The GVN has also advanced a concept developed by Dr. Robert Gallo, The Homer & Martha Gudelsky Distinguished Professor in Medicine, Co-Founder & Director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Co-Founder & Chairman of the International Scientific Leadership Board of the Global Virus Network, and by Dr. Konstantin Chumakov, Associate Director for Vaccines at the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and a GVN Center Director, to use the existing and proven safe Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) as a preventive measure against SARS-CoV-2. Non-specific protective effects of OPV have been demonstrated several times against a broad set of different virus outbreaks in the 1960s and 70s. More recent studies confirmed these observations and revealed that other live vaccines produce pronounced non-specific protective effects, whereas inactivated vaccines do not. Data from randomized clinical studies showed that OPV immunization campaigns reduced all-cause mortality despite the complete absence of poliovirus circulation. The emerging body of evidence suggests that besides inducing specific humoral and cellular immune responses, OPV may activate multiple branches of the immune system, including training innate immunity and thus increasing resistance to a broad spectrum of pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2. The Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, a GVN Center of Excellence, submitted a proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an 11,000-person clinical trial to demonstrate and establish the efficacy of OPV against SARS-CoV-2.

The GVN is playing a very meaningful role in the battle against SARS-CoV-2 by coalescing the worlds foremost virologists and COVID-19 specialists to collaboratively share their expertise, findings and research, and by bringing together academia and industry to collaborate on the development and advancement of novel technologies, therapeutics and vaccine candidates for COVID-19, said Dr. Gallo. I am pleased the GVN was able to identify laboratories to independently verify the efficacy of BIOPROTECT, bring the potential benefit of OPV to the forefront of the scientific community and spearhead OPV clinical studies in China, Iran, Russia and the United States.

About the Global Virus Network (GVN) The Global Virus Network (GVN) is essential and critical in the preparedness, defense and first research response to emerging, exiting and unidentified viruses that pose a clear and present threat to public health, working in close coordination with established national and international institutions. It is a coalition comprised of eminent human and animal virologists from 53 Centers of Excellence and 10 Affiliates in 32 countries worldwide, working collaboratively to train the next generation, advance knowledge about how to identify and diagnose pandemic viruses, mitigate and control how such viruses spread and make us sick, as well as develop drugs, vaccines and treatments to combat them. No single institution in the world has expertise in all viral areas other than the GVN, which brings together the finest medical virologists to leverage their individual expertise and coalesce global teams of specialists on the scientific challenges, issues and problems posed by pandemic viruses. The GVN is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. For more information, please visit http://www.gvn.org. Follow us on Twitter @GlobalVirusNews

About the Peter Doherty Institute Located in the heart of Melbournes Biomedical Precinct, the Doherty Institute is named in honor of Patron, Laureate Professor Peter Doherty, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering how the immune system recognizes virus-infected cells. Under the expert guidance of Director, University of Melbourne Professor Sharon Lewin, a leader in research and clinical management of HIV and infectious diseases, the Doherty Institute has more than 700 staff who work on infection and immunity through a broad spectrum of activities. This includes discovery research; diagnosis, surveillance and investigation of infectious disease outbreaks; and the development of ways to prevent, treat and eliminate infectious diseases.

About the Rega Institute of Medical Research The Rega Institute was founded in 1954 by Professor Piet De Somer and named after the 18th century philanthropist and professor Josephus Rega of Leuven. It hosts part of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Since its inception, the Rega Institute hosts also the Section of Medicinal Chemistry of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and it is thus a true interdepartmental and interdisciplinary research institute. The Rega Institute has always been a jewel in the crown of research and innovation at KU Leuven on the basis of publications, citations and prestigious scientific prizes of its members.

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Two Centers of Excellence of the Global Virus Network Independently Verify an Antimicrobial Technology That Kills SARS-CoV-2 on Surfaces for More Than...

Ayurveda Therapy : The way To Get rid of Corona Disease – Avenue Mail

By Lalit Garg

Bharatbhoomi (India) has been famous as Ayurveda land since ancient times. Everyparticle and molecule of this land having medicinal properties that can cure every type of disease. Incurable diseases can also be destroyed by Ayurveda in our country. There are many medicines in Ayurveda that can combat corona infection. These drugs increase immunity without any side effects, which is necessary to fight a serious disease like corona. During some experiments conducted under the Ministry of AYUSH, it was observed that all those patients who took Ayurvedic or homeopathic medicine for at least seven days during the quarantine period did not develop the infection and became disease free.

Prime Minister NarendraModi, in Mann Ki Baat, recently emphasized on promoting traditional Ayurveda knowledge, treatment and experimentation by connecting with Innovative India Campaign. The encouraging results coming out in the researches of Ministry of AYUSH have shown a ray of hope. Indeed, Ayurveda is the greatest need of the present. Corona havoc can be prevented; if people adopt a healthy lifestyle and include the intake of Ayurvedic herbs in their daily routine.

Various types of research are going on around the world for the treatment of Corona. Medical scientists are working constantly to combat the corona infection. In the midst of all this, the Indian Ayurvedic system of medicine is also engaged in research, treatment and use with its herbs. With its use and treatment, many cases of corona patients getting healthy have not only changed but also show a ray of hope against this deadly disease in the world.

These days, the demand for curcumin-rich turmeric, Ashwagandha, Amla (amalaki), Giloy Juice,chyawanprash etc. has increased greatly in overseas countries like US, Europe & Russia. In many countries of Europe, doctors have been recommending Ayurvedic medicine to patients along with allopathic medicines. In this era of Corona pandemic, foreigners are looking for Ayurvedic medicines on the advice of doctors. Most of the corona infected patients of Delhi, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Goa and Rajasthan are recovering from intake ofAyurvedic medicines.

Goa government has announced that all the Corona infected patients of that state have become disease free due to Ayurvedic medicines and now there is not a single patient of Corona there. The doctors provided Ayurvedic herbs along allopathic medicines to corona patients in Goa. In Gujarat, about 8 thousand patients were cured from Ayurvedic medicines. Ayurvedic medicines like SambhmaniButi, DashmoolKwath, TrikatuChurna and Turmeric etc. has been given to corona patients. Ayurvedic medicines were successfully administered to 6,210 corona virus victims at 179 centers in Uttar Pradesh and they have a positive effect in ending corona disease. AyushKavach has also been started to establish Ayurveda and Yoga treatment system here.

Health screening of 6000 corona assemblages was done in Ayurveda method at Gandhi VidyaMandir Ayurveda College in Rajasthan. According to the Chancellor of the University KanakamalDugad, corona patients have been given regular intake of nutritional chemicals such as basil, Giloy, Trikatu, nutmeg, mace,cinnamon, cardamom etc. The Ministry of AYUSH of India has advised people to take Ayurvedic herbs to increase immunity and strengthen their respiratory system.

. Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan and Union Minister of AYUSH ShripadYessoNaik have also launched the Sanjeevani Mobile App, through which ventures are being made to promote Ayurveda by making contact with as many people as possible. This impact of Ayurveda and allopaths being able to drive away corona disease is a major achievement. If both these systems of medicine are coordinated in the same way, then India will once again be able to achieve a meaningful place in the direction of becoming a World Guru through Ayurveda like Yoga and non-violence.

Dr. KN Dwivedi, senior scientist of Banaras Hindu University has also admitted that we should use our traditional medicinal system Ayurveda to treat Covid 19. He plans to work on the possibility of ayurvedic treatment of corona virus by testing Fifatrol (an ayurvedic drug) on humans. He has sent the proposal of this research to the research team in collaboration with Emil Pharmaceutical. The proposal states that it is an anti-microbial medicinal formula prepared from 13 herbs fromFIFATROL, the five major herbs included includeSudarshanVati, SanjeevaniVati, GodantiBhasma, TripuvanKirtiRas and MrityunjayRas. While the portions of the eight drugs have been mixed with Tulsi, Kutki, Chirayatra, Motha, Giloy, Daruhaldi, Karanja and Appamarga.

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has also studied this fifatrol, in which this drug has been proved as an Ayurvedic antibiotic. It was found effective in preventing bacterial infection during research. It is helpful in boosting immunity.

This Mandakini of Ayurveda medicine has never been blocked in India nor will it ever be blocked. Today, the whole world is eager to be inundated with this AyurvedicMandakini, it is certainly a good sign for the whole of humanity. Today Ayurveda medicine has become as important as globally, it has never been so important before. If people understood and realized the importance of Ayurveda for their health, then the attitude towards disease and its treatment will change in the world. There is a solution to the worldwide disease like corona in expanding, broadening our perspective towards medicine. Ayurveda has to move privately towards universalism, universalism or inclusiveness. This can create a wave of healthy and effective health system on this entire earth.

It will be a matter of pride for Indians that Ayurveda will be a great gift to the world from India. Ayurveda has been an integral part of the life of Indians. But now it will become the subject of the whole world and part of human life.

Indian Yoga and Ayurveda is a unique disease treatment system, which has been interpreted in such a way that mental and spiritual progress along with the beauty of the body. The sages have given Pranayam for posture and longevity for the strength of the body on the basis of experience in a scientific way, by which a person can take a great resolution and implement it. Therefore, Yoga and Ayurveda are capable of giving health, happiness and peace in this life and also paves the way for disease-liberation. Freedom from Corona Tip of healthy life That is the birth of Ayurveda, from this people will get new thinking, new health philosophy.

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Ayurveda Therapy : The way To Get rid of Corona Disease - Avenue Mail

How to live longer: The best diet hailed by health experts to increase life expectancy – Express

The Western diet and lifestyle which includes consumption of processed foods such as burgers and little to no exercise are often viewed as two of the main contributors to rapid ageing and disease.

Vegans and vegetarians live longer and have lower mortality rates.

They also tend to have healthier gut profiles with a reduced abundance of pathogenic gut bacteria and greater abundance of protective species.

Those who followed this way of eating also had lower blood pressure, lower incidence of heart disease, lower overall cancer incidence and have a lower risk of developing diabetes.

Vegan, vegetarian and plant-based diets eliminate all animal-based foods including meat, dairy and eggs.

This usually results in a diet which is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds.

Numerous researches suggest that diets loaded with these plant foods help to increase life expectancy.

Moreover, these diets tend to pack plenty of fibre, plant protein and antioxidants.

Diets rich in these nutrients are believed to safeguard against obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease which in turn promote increased life expectancy.

In a study with the National Library of Medicine, cardiovascular disease mortality and cancer incidence in vegetarians was analysed.

The study noted: The objective of the present analysis was to investigate cardiovascular disease mortality and cancer incidence among vegetarians and nonvegetarians.

Participants were from the UK, Germany, USA, the Netherlands and Japan.

The study concluded that all-cause mortality in vegetarians was 9 percent lower in nonvegetarians with the mortality from ischemic heart disease being significantly lower in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians.

Our results suggest that vegetarians have a significantly lower ischemic heart disease mortality and overall cancer incidence than nonvegetarians, it added.

Vegan, vegetarian and plant-based diets contain the best types of food to eat.

Fruit and vegetables contain protective bioactive compounds such as antioxidants, polyphenols, fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Whole grains are rich in phytochemicals, trace minerals and protein with whole grains helping to lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Plant-based proteins such as beans, legumes and pulses help to lower LDL'bad'cholesterol which reduces cancer risk and nuts and seeds contain a variety of vitamins and minerals which reduce risk of cancer mortality.

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How to live longer: The best diet hailed by health experts to increase life expectancy - Express

A view from Dave Trott: Never ask a barber if you need a haircut – CampaignLive

When doctors go on strike, fewer people die.

Take Los Angeles: in 1976, hospital staff went on strike for 52 days and deaths went down by 18%.

In Israel, in 1973, a hospital strike lasted 28 days and deaths went down by 50%.

In Bogot, Colombia, in 1976, a hospital strike lasted 52 days and deaths went down by 35%.

We think that increased technology in healthcare has resulted in increased longevity.

But researchers Sonja and John McKinley found that, since 1900, medical intervention has increased average lifespan by just 1% to 3%, thats about a year.

So whats actually happening?

It seems the main problem is unnecessary intervention medical conditions that would be better left alone.

It seems to be the old clich: "Never ask a barber if you need a haircut."

Its the same if you take your car to a mechanic and ask if theres anything wrong.

Hell find something wrong, thats his job.

Thats how it is with plumbers, soldiers, chefs, teachers, doctors, everyone.

When you go to a doctor, they recommend a treatment, drugs or surgery.

During a doctors strike, only emergency cases got seen, and deaths went down, so what does that tell you?

It tells you that a lot of deaths are from treatments prescribed for non-emergency conditions.

Especially in the US, doctors are constantly incentivised by drug companies to prescribe the medicines they make.

According to the FDA, in 1978, 1.5 million Americans were hospitalised for prescription drugs, and one in seven hospital beds were used by people with adverse drug reactions.

According to the General Accounting Office, 51% of all drugs between 1976 and 1985 caused adverse reactions, such as: heart, liver or kidney failure, birth defects, blood disorders, respiratory arrest, seizures or blindness.

Prescription drugs are reported to kill 100,000 patients a year in US hospitals.

Robert Mendelsohn, ex-chairman of the Medical Licencing Committee for Illinois, put it this way: "The great danger to health is the doctor who practises modern medicine. I believe modern medicines treatments for diseases are seldom effective, and theyre often more dangerous than the disease theyre designed to treat. I believe that much modern medicine could disappear from the face of the earth (doctors, hospitals, drugs, and equipment) and the effect on our health would be immediate and beneficial."

Mendelsohn is saying that an awful lot of problems could be solved without medical intervention just plain old-fashioned common sense.

Of course, a specialist, in any area, would never agree with that.

Its in their interest to find a complicated problem, because thats their job.

Murray Chick, our head of planning, once told me about the advice one of the cleverest men in advertising gave him when he was a young planner.

He said: "Its your job to make the client believe his problem is unbelievably complicated, and youre the one person who can solve it for him."

As a client, or a creative, its worth remembering that.

The real solution to most problems is the radical application of common sense, thats what creativity is.

Dont ask a specialist for help unless youve already decided you cant solve theproblem with common sense.

In other words, never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

What would you expect him to say?

Dave Trott is the author ofCreative Blindness and How to Cure It,Creative Mischief, Predatory Thinking and One Plus One Equals Three

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A view from Dave Trott: Never ask a barber if you need a haircut - CampaignLive

Quanterix Expands Menu of Ultra-Sensitive Neurology Assays with Simoa P-Tau181 V2 Kit for Improved Detection and Study of Alzheimer’s Disease -…

BILLERICA, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Quanterix Corporation (NASDAQ: QTRX), a company digitizing biomarker analysis to advance the science of precision health, today announced that it will expand its robust menu of ready-to-use Simoa kits to include tau phosphorylated at threonine 181 (p-tau181), a highly specific biomarker for the study of Alzheimers disease pathology, in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), serum and plasma. A growing body of research, including work published recently in The Lancet Neurology, suggests that the biomarker could prove critical to predicting Alzheimers disease progression and differentiating the disease from other neurodegenerative disorders. Moreover, an ultra-sensitive, blood p-tau181 assay may hold the key to advancing preventative care for the disease in clinics and via homecare sampling through a simple, cost-effective blood-based screening that can deliver an early, objective diagnosis. These findings and details on how researchers can gain early access to Quanterix new commercial assay through the Simoa Accelerator Laboratory, will be discussed during an upcoming Powering Precision Health (PPH) Think Tank Webinar taking place at 10 a.m., EDT on June 3, 2020.

Biomarkers continue to play an invaluable role in understanding how neurological diseases manifest, progress and respond to treatment, said Kevin Hrusovsky, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, Quanterix. Building on years of innovation and a proven track record for successfully commercializing ultra-sensitive assays that disrupt markets and drive innovative breakthroughs forward, our p-tau181 version 2 assay kit offers researchers unrivaled visibility and specificity into this revolutionary marker in serum and plasma. The exquisite sensitivity of Simoa uniquely positions us to deliver on the promise of p-tau181 to pave new pathways in Alzheimers disease exploration, just as our neurofilament light chain (Nf-L) assay has transformed research for other neurological diseases. In particular, the impact of a high-definition, blood-based Simoa assay that rivals traditional CSF or PET scans could be revolutionary, with material potential for home sampling to enable early detection and development and approval of drug therapies desperately needed to improve outcomes for the millions of people living with Alzheimers disease today. This biomarker advance fits perfectly in our vision to transform reactive sick care' into proactive asymptomatic precision healthcare.

While deaths associated with other pervasive diseases such as heart disease have declined between 2000 and 2018, Alzheimers disease-related deaths have increased by 146 percent, according to the Alzheimers Association. Importantly, there is no objective test to diagnose the disorder, leading many physicians to rely solely on subjective cognitive assessments. As a result, many patients are not diagnosed until late in the diseases progression, after symptoms of cognitive decline, such as memory loss, begin to present. Even then, the disease can often be misdiagnosed for another neurodegenerative condition, such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

For years, researchers have studied the utility of biomarkers for understanding, detecting and monitoring Alzheimers disease. These efforts have been accelerated in large part by the PPH network, which has grown into a global epicenter for biomarker-enabled innovations to not only detect and treat, but ultimately, prevent disease. Resulting studies demonstrate the vast utility of proteins such as total tau and Nf-L. Researchers, doctors and pharmaceutical companies are now harnessing these biomarkers to see the disease earlier, monitor its progression and inform clinical decision making more effectively, and assess the viability of experimental therapies. Quanterix ultra-sensitive immunoassay technology, Simoa, which empowers single- and multi-plex detection of key biomarkers with 1000 times greater sensitivity than competing enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) solutions, is the driving technology behind much of this research. Among the most notable is a 2019 Nature Medicine paper that used Simoa to see signs of Alzheimers disease 16 years before symptoms through the high-definition detection of Nf-L. The technology has powered hundreds of similarly peer-reviewed journals over the years that demonstrate the potential for blood-based detection of the disease with equal or greater sensitivity as compared to CSF or PET biomarkers. Collectively, these studies create an influential body of research that advances the preventative care paradigm envisioned by PPH at its inception by supporting the utility of a non-invasive and easily administered blood test to detect Alzheimers disease before symptoms.

Today, emerging research suggests that p-tau181 could hold even greater diagnostic promise for Alzheimers disease, as it has proven capable of differentiating the condition from other forms of dementia with greater specificity than total tau. Leaders in the field of neurodegenerative disease research, such as the authors of The Lancet Neurology paper Professors Henrik Zetterberg, MD, PhD, and Kaj Blennow, MD, PhD, of the University of Gothenburg, believe blood p-tau181 has the potential to revolutionize Alzheimers disease research and patient care in much the same way that serum-based Nf-L has for multiple sclerosis (MS).These concepts further progress PPHs mission and vision to harness biomarkers for true precision health, with myriad implications that include improving understanding of the condition, enabling earlier diagnosis and intervention, informing more accurate long-term care, identifying clinical trial candidates earlier in the disease cascade and, subsequently, accelerating promising new therapies to market.

The latest installment of the PPH Think Tank series of webinars, entitled Novel p-tau181 Blood Immunoassay and the Future of Alzheimers Disease Research, will explore the vast opportunities associated with p-tau181 to revolutionize the way we approach disease and administer care. Specifically, the discussion will detail how an innovative immunoassay to measure p-tau181 in blood could accelerate efforts to establish a clinically relevant routine Alzheimers disease diagnostic test, and the potential high-definition detection via small volume blood samples creates for homecare precision health. Hrusovsky, together with Professors Zetterberg and Blennow, will break down the findings from the recent paper in The Lancet Neurology and examine how Simoa is powering exploration into uncharted territory as it pertains to Alzheimers disease detection, monitoring, treatment and prevention.

Were on the cusp of what could be an incredible new era for Alzheimers patients and those with a genetic predisposition to the disease, said Zetterberg. The ability to see dementia asymptomatically and moreover conclusively distinguish it as Alzheimers disease-induced could forever change the face of this condition. P-tau181 shows immense promise in this regard, which is augmented considerably when harnessed by a leader in detection like Quanterix.

Early findings from our work with p-tau181 are very encouraging, said Blennow. The biomarker is proving to be an exceptional new tool in our arsenal against Alzheimers disease. While CSF p-tau181 has been recognized as a highly valuable biomarker in Alzheimers disease pathology, the greater clinical benefit will come from our ability to effectively harness the marker in blood. The unprecedented specificity of p-tau181 paired with a highly sensitive technology like Simoa promises to broaden our knowledge of this devastating disease considerably, with monumental implications for patients and caregivers.

To register for the webinar, click here.

To learn more about how you can take advantage of our early access program for p-tau181 through the Accelerator Lab or pre-order your commercial kits, visit https://www.quanterix.com.

For more about Quanterix Simoa technology, visit https://www.quanterix.com/Simoa-bead-technology.

About Quanterix

Quanterix is a company thats digitizing biomarker analysis with the goal of advancing the science of precision health. The companys digital health solution, Simoa, has the potential to change the way in which healthcare is provided today by giving researchers the ability to closely examine the continuum from health to disease. Quanterix technology is designed to enable much earlier disease detection, better prognoses and enhanced treatment methods to improve the quality of life and longevity of the population for generations to come. The technology is currently being used for research applications in several therapeutic areas, including oncology, neurology, cardiology, inflammation and infectious disease. The company was established in 2007 and is located in Billerica, Massachusetts. For additional information, please visit https://www.quanterix.com.

About Powering Precision Health

Powering Precision Health is the world's first independent, non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the world's leading physicians, scientists, innovators, investors and patient advocates together to unveil their latest research on new biomarkers that are revolutionizing precision health. Founded by Kevin Hrusovsky, a widely acclaimed thought leader and visionary in life sciences and personalized medicine, Powering Precision Health is a movement that represents the intersection of new technological capabilities with the latest medical research. Its rooted in the science of precision medicine, which shows personalized treatments to be an increasingly more effective way to maximize drug efficacy and minimize toxicity. In addition to the impact environmental and lifestyle factors can have on minimizing disease triggers, precision health marks an evolution in the way we approach disease and aims to inspire a full healthcare transformation, from philosophy to approach to outcome. In an industry often plagued by skepticism and marred by false promises, PPH puts science first and brings together stakeholders that span from fundamental research to clinical practice, investors, policy makers, patient advocacy groups, and anyone who embraces the vision of Powering Precision Health. Featuring a distinguished keynote lineup of dignitaries, the Summit unveils groundbreaking approaches to prevention, early diagnosis, and next-generation treatments. Powering Precision Health is supported thanks to the generous contributions of sponsors from a wide range of companies and organizations committed to advancing precision health.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "may," "will," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend" and similar expressions (as well as other words or expressions referencing future events, conditions or circumstances) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release are based on Quanterix expectations and assumptions as of the date of this press release. Each of these forward-looking statements involves risks and uncertainties. Factors that may cause Quanterix actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements in this press release are discussed in Quanterix filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including the "Risk Factors" sections contained therein. Except as required by law, Quanterix assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in expectations, even as new information becomes available.

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Quanterix Expands Menu of Ultra-Sensitive Neurology Assays with Simoa P-Tau181 V2 Kit for Improved Detection and Study of Alzheimer's Disease -...

Ayurvedic Rasayanas to battle against upsurge of Covid-19 pandemic | FNB News – fnbnews.com

What Maharishi Charaka the father of Ayurveda system of medicine mentioned 2000 years ago in Charak Samhita, Rasayana treatment is also an answer to epidemics, has now been turning out to be a reality. See, lately, the Ayush Ministry has approved to launch clinical research studies on the possibility of using Ayurvedic medicines as preventive or add-on to standard care to Covid-19.

This is a joint initiative of the Ministries of Ayush, Health, Science & Technology through the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) with technical support from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). They are going to work together to test four Ayurvedic formulations (Rasayanas) Ashwagandha, Yashtimadhu, Guduchi, Peepli and Ayush 64 for the purpose.

Ever since the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic and the probable preventive measures being applied, Ayurveda finds an upper hand. Earlier, at the onset of the outbreak of the pandemic, our PM urged the people to follow the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) protocol on ways to stay fit and enhance immunity and make it a part of their lives. And these Ayurvedic measures are on the go and have been instrumental in boosting immunity, which is the most effective arsenal to combat this virus. And lately, the governments nod for clinical trials of Ayurvedic formulations (Rasayanas) will be an icing on the cake if it turns out to be effective against Covid-19.

Indeed, this is a welcome move by the Ayush Ministry to try a hand with Ayurvedic Rasayanas, which have the potential to come up with a probable preventive cure in some form or the other. The Rasayana products have the characteristics to increase or decrease some aspect of the bodily processes system to create balance. It can work in a multi-directional manner to help the bodily processes in regaining balance and maintaining it. The Rasayana has a vital impact on the immune system, which is the key to preventing much in terms of any illness. And it has been reported in Covid-19 cases that the stronger the immunity, the safer you are the weaker the immunity, the more vulnerable you are.

In case of Covid-19 infection Ayurvedic Rasayana can be helpful in all the three stages. In stage one it can very effectively prevent a person from getting infected by strengthening the immune system. In the stage two if someone has got infected, the only way he can come out of infection is due to his immunity and that is apparent from the available data, which shows despite the fact that there is no treatment for Covid-19 infection, more than 83% of closed cases, people get cured of infection. It is because of their own defence mechanism. It is quite logical that if the defence mechanism of an individual is strengthened with any effective Ayurvedic Rasayana he will come out of the infection faster and with much less damages as compared to just on his own. Third stage is post-Covid-19 infection when a person comes out of infection he comes out with some severe morbid conditions these can be improved with the help of some specific Ayurvedic Rasayana/medicines, because if ignored this could cause lifelong problems.

The Ayurvedic Rasayanas, in the form of single herbs except Ayush-64, which have recently got the nod for the trial by the government have almost all the characteristics to bring holistic health, strengthening immunity but our rich Ayurvedic heritage have a long list of Rasayanas having multiple herbs working in synergy to create much greater effect. The key to safeguard us from any infection is our own immunity or defence mechanism therefore it has to be strengthened as much as possible. Today it is Covid-19, tomorrow it could be something else, may be more deadly, may be less. But one thing is sure that new viruses will keep coming and we must keep ourselves prepared with strong immunity.

The role of Rasayana in restoring holistic health and fighting the infections borne by the epidemics is predominant. One of such Rasayana product is Maharishi Amrit Kalash well-known and well researched, with about 40 non-clinical and four clinical studies, conducted in renowned institutions around the world, to its credit. All indicating it to be successful for restoring health, longevity and overall balance and wellbeing. So, going natural and taking care of your health aiming for longevity and preparing the body to fight an infection like the current one, including the intake of the best and the most reliable Rasayana product Maharishi Amrit Kalash would be a wise option.

Read more here:
Ayurvedic Rasayanas to battle against upsurge of Covid-19 pandemic | FNB News - fnbnews.com

Berrino: Death can be beautiful. But first you have to learn to live (long) – Surfacing Magazine

Jo's was a discreet but constant presence. She was practically always there, in the audience, listening to her husband, who spoke from the stage in front of crowds of theaters and auditoriums. And he, Franco Berrino, epidemiologist, director of the predictive medicine clinic of the Cancer Institute of Milan for years and author of very successful texts on longevity and healthy life, knows that she is still there, even if last February She was born in heaven. She knows it because it is the message that she left him on their last day, when she asked him to sing her Tibetan mantras (she had never done it before, I understood afterwards that it was her way to greet me) by letting herself be kept close in your arms. And it went like this, serenely. Because he was not afraid of death. But in order not to be afraid of death explains Berrino to Half an hour with Corriere (here the full video interview) you need to know how to live life well. Death does not scare those who have had a conscious life, those who have been aware, those who have realized they are living . Moreover, he himself already imagined his death and told it in his new book The food of wisdom What really feeds us , written with four hands with the Taoist master Marco Montagnani, and dedicated to his life partner (who in the soul guarded the shadow of the valleys and the light of the peaks, like our mountains) who comes out today for Mondadori: I dreamed of being dressed in a white tunic, which in real life I never wear, in a dojo, at the end of a group meditation session. In the end everyone leaves, except for a beautiful girl: she comes back to me, touches my shoulder and I simply disappear. The dress empties of my body and slides to the ground . He wouldn't know who that girl was. No, I didn't recognize her. However, we like to think that it could be his Jo (with him above in the photo of Enrica Bortolazzi) , which he tenderly continues to call my bride.

You say that those on death are among the most beautiful pages of your book We are experiencing difficult days. But I think the most terrible thing is not so much the number of the dead, but the fact of dying alone, intubated, without being able to hold the bride, the groom, a son by the hand. After all, the death had already been stolen from us by medicine, by medical assistance, by resuscitators. And above all it had been stolen from a culture that sees it only as something terrible and negative. Life is said to be the thing that goes by while you are busy doing something else. Death can be beautiful. Today in the medical environment it is thought that one dies only from illness. But a disease is not necessary to die: we can very well get to die from old and disease-free. Diseases are and have many causes, but we can do a lot to avoid them, with food or exercise .

You have long maintained that healthy eating is the best medicine Food has a great effect on the immune system. We need good food to feed our soil, which is then our intestines, where billions of microbes that work for us live. But in today's way of eating there is no good food for our microbes. Vegetable fibers are good food and if we eat them, we get sick less of diabetes, cancer, heart attack, diseases of the respiratory system of the digestive system and also of infectious diseases. The studies in this field are very clear: those who follow a diet rich in fiber get less ill. Also of infectious diseases, because we make the digestive system that is the seat of our immune system work better .

Among other things, in this period it seems that everyone is spending time eating. Do you know that the hashtag #andratuttostretto was coined by paraphrasing the slogan It will be all right? I suggest taking advantage of the time finally found to stay in the kitchen and prepare healthy things. Cooking whole grains or foods rich in fiber that, in fact, also defend us from coronavirus. Instead, sweets should not be eaten because they are not good for our immune system. And if you really want to do them, prepare them so that they don't raise the blood sugar level

You also offer recipes on your Facebook page, some with captivating names. Like the panzerotti della happiness, which are just sweets Serotonin is the hormone of happiness and something sweet is needed to get it to the brain. So I chose ingredients that contain large quantities of amino acids that stimulate it: tofu, dates, nuts. The result was a sweet baked with whole wheat flour, which is a healthy concentrate of happiness .

How do you live this confinement period? Net of the situation healthcare, it's fantastic to be in Milan with clean air and silence. My apartment has a small terrace, which I had never used much in the past, only my wife sometimes looked after us with flowers. At noon it is in the sun. I'm going to have lunch there and it's a beautiful thing: you can taste the feeling of a city without pollution, which has certainly played a role in this epidemic. Then every day, in contravention of the rules a bit, I go upstairs to the friends who have a big TV screen and together we do aerobics: 40 minutes of aerobic exercise. You must always be active, even physical exercise helps us not to get sick, it has a great effect on the immune system .

Silence is something that in fact we all have a little rediscovered these days. Yes, and it is very important. It is not only silence understood as distance from sounds but from all the things that disturb our intimacy, our ability to look inside ourselves, our internal hygiene. Silence is indispensable to free the mind. The great masters can also meditate in the midst of traffic, but the less gifted people really need silence to find themselves. And finding yourself is very important in this world where we are always distracted by something, noise, images, television. TV is a truly perverse tool, it seems that it was invented on purpose so that, always remaining in operation, it prevents us from thinking and reflecting. Do you think that Gandhi remained silent one day a week, even when he had great political responsibilities and if there was an urgency he responded by writing on a ticket. I occasionally do a day of silence, a day when I don't speak. Silence helps us to realize that we are alive, that we exist .

A chat with Franco Berrino is never just an interview. It is a small journey that takes unexpected directions, a sort of journey without a specific destination. Like what he did for an entire day with Marco Montagnani, a Taoist teacher, in the Casentino woods, addressing the theme of life and that of death, that of fear (I was born in '44 under the bombing, I learned to know fear from the beginning ) and that of destiny, that of simplicity and that of gratitude. And also that of love. Love is like the sun, it is love for everything underlines Berrino -. Many of our hardships depend on the ego that we built in our mind, on the personality that we created to be accepted by our parents, people, employers. That ego that is so selfish that it hinders us in the search for the deep truth that is within us. At some point it is good to go the other way, to dismantle our ego. And that's when we will discover love. Because, as my Taoist master says, love appears when the mind dies .

Excerpt from:
Berrino: Death can be beautiful. But first you have to learn to live (long) - Surfacing Magazine

Fact check: COVID-19 may be ‘here to stay,’ even after a vaccine? – Destin Log

The consensus medical view is that this virus is here to stay. In other words, this virus cannot be defeated simply by staying inside for a couple of months.

This content is being provided for free as a public service to our readers during the coronavirus outbreak. Please support local journalism by subscribing to the Northwest Florida Daily News or the Panama City News Herald .

The debate over when to reopen states amid the coronavirus pandemic has escalated quickly.

Frustration with the extended quarantine is mounting on social media, and residents around the country have defied social distancing orders to attend rallies demanding an easing of restrictions.

Protesters say the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed enough to justify reopening, given the mounting economic and health impacts.

One viral Facebook post making the case to move toward reopening in Wisconsin says we need to get used to living in a world with COVID-19.

It was posted April 26 by Dr. David Murdock, a research cardiologist with the Aspirus health system in Wausau who was placed on leave after attending an April 19 reopen rally.

The consensus medical view is that this virus is here to stay. In other words, this virus cannot be defeated simply by staying inside for a couple of months, wrote Murdock, who said he was observing from the rear of the rally at a safe distance to gather material for a memoir. The world will likely see periodic outbreaks, and we need to accept that and be prepared to deal with COVID long term.

Murdock makes an array of points in the wide-ranging post, which has been shared more than 2,000 times. But were especially interested in the claim about the longevity of COVID-19.

Of course, the Safer at Home order from Gov. Tony Evers and similar efforts across the country, including guidance from President Donald Trump is not designed to eradicate the disease. It was implemented to slow the spread so hospitals arent overwhelmed.

Understanding that, we still wanted to examine the underlying claim.

COVID-19 has sickened 3 million and killed more than 200,000 globally. Is it really here to stay?

We asked the experts.

Many experts have said a true return to normalcy likely isnt possible until a vaccine is widely available, which could be a year or more.

"We're going to probably all need to be used to social distancing for the next 12 to 18 months," John Raymond, CEO of the Medical College of Wisconsin, said during an April 27 online briefing for the Greater Milwaukee Committee. Until hopefully we have an effective vaccine, it's likely we're going to be living with COVID-19.

But a vaccine doesnt necessarily mean the end of COVID-19.

Absent a vaccine, I think it would quite likely become like seasonal flu or perhaps like some of the other coronaviruses that we are familiar with, said Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard Universitys School of Public Health. It is entirely plausible that this could become part of our regular landscape of respiratory viraI infections.

The vaccine he references would be a theoretical one that is 100% effective and gives lifelong immunity. But vaccines are almost never perfect, notes Barry Bloom, a professor of public health at Harvard.

Bloom also expressed concern over the volume of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations on social media, which include a host of conspiracy theories about pushing people to vaccinate and concerns about how the vaccines may be dangerous. That could affect willingness to take a vaccine once its available.

The vaccine is only a tool if its used, Bloom said.

Hanage said an array of key unknowns will determine the long-term future of COVID-19:

Whether people can get reinfected, and how severe those recurrences would be;

How much immunity results from minor infections;

How the summer warm-up alters infectiousness (based on both peoples behavior and the reaction of the virus itself; generally, coronaviruses dont survive as long in warmer weather).

Even if the virus does stick around, though, it may not be the threat it is today.

If that immunity is not very long-lasting and we have good reason from other coronaviruses including the original SARS, that it wont be what type of infections will people have when their immunity starts to wane? Hanage said. The first thing to say is we dont know, but I think its also plausible to suggest they might be milder.

Its worth noting that SARS a disease caused by a coronavirus that killed 774 during a 2003 outbreak has been eradicated. But there are key differences that make COVID-19 a more formidable foe.

In a March 5 article for The Lancet medical journal, Annelies Wilder-Smith noted COVID-19 can be passed on by those with minor symptoms or none at all; SARS patients generally werent contagious until they had severe symptoms. And COVID-19 is more easily transmitted and has had a more prevalent community spread.

The virus remains, and we need to learn how to deal with it, said Wilder-Smith, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Certainly lockdown is only a temporary solution whilst we gear up to provide the true solution. Yes, we need to prepare for this reality.

Charles Branas, chair of the epidemiology department at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health, said eradicating the virus like we did with smallpox will be challenging, to say the least. Ali Khan, dean of the College of Public Health and professor of epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said COVID-19 sticking around is likely, but not inevitable.

Khan noted that some countries already are attempting to eliminate the virus. China, New Zealand, Australia and Vietnam have all set a goal of not just containment, but elimination. The New York Times reported April 24 that the adjoining nations of Australia and New Zealand are seeing just a handful of new infections each day and closing in on their extraordinary goal.

Based on what we know now, we rate this claim as TRUE. Experts say its still too early to know this with complete certainty, since much remains unknown about the nature of immunity. And we have no clue how effective a future vaccine may be. But a best guess at this point is that COVID-19 could indeed stick around long-term, waxing and waning similar to the seasonal flu. Experts say theres also reason to believe that lingering version could be less severe, though.

David Murdock, Facebook post, April 26, 2020

Conference call with Bill Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard Universitys School of Public Health, April 29, 2020

Conference call with Barry Bloom, a professor of public health, Harvard, Harvard University, April 29, 2020

Email exchange with Amy Kalkbrenner, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, April 28, 2020

Email exchange with Ali Khan, dean of the College of Public Health and professor of epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, April 28, 2020

Email exchange with Annelies Wilder-Smith, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, April 28, 2020

Email exchange with Charles Branas, chair of the epidemiology department at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health, April 28, 2020

The Lancet, Can we contain the COVID-19 outbreak with the same measures as for SARS?, March 5, 2020

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Frequently Asked Questions, accessed April 28, 2020

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A week after Evers unveiled a plan to reopen, there's little clarity on benchmarks like what metrics to monitor, April 27, 2020

Wausau Daily Herald, 'I'm guilty. I was there': Doctor admits being at Open Wisconsin rally; Aspirus placed him on leave, April 20, 2020

New York Times, Vanquish the Virus? Australia and New Zealand Aim to Show the Way, April 24, 2020

More:
Fact check: COVID-19 may be 'here to stay,' even after a vaccine? - Destin Log

Precision Medicine Software Market to See Massive Growth by 2026| Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen, Roper Technologies, Fabric Genomics, Foundation…

Global Precision Medicine Software Market: Trends Estimates High Demand by 2027

The Precision Medicine Software Market 2020 report includes the market strategy, market orientation, expert opinion and knowledgeable information. The Precision Medicine Software Industry Report is an in-depth study analyzing the current state of the Precision Medicine Software Market. It provides a brief overview of the market focusing on definitions, classifications, product specifications, manufacturing processes, cost structures, market segmentation, end-use applications and industry chain analysis. The study on Precision Medicine Software Market provides analysis of market covering the industry trends, recent developments in the market and competitive landscape.

It takes into account the CAGR, value, volume, revenue, production, consumption, sales, manufacturing cost, prices, and other key factors related to the global Precision Medicine Software market. All findings and data on the global Precision Medicine Software market provided in the report are calculated, gathered, and verified using advanced and reliable primary and secondary research sources. The regional analysis offered in the report will help you to identify key opportunities of the global Precision Medicine Software market available in different regions and countries.

The final report will add the analysis of the Impact of Covid-19 in this report Precision Medicine Software industry.

Some of the companies competing in the Precision Medicine Software markets are: Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen, Roper Technologies, Fabric Genomics, Foundation Medicine, Sophia Genetics, PierianDx, Human Longevity, Translational Software, Gene42, Inc, Lifeomic Health

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The report scrutinizes different business approaches and frameworks that pave the way for success in businesses. The report used Porters five techniques for analyzing the Precision Medicine Software Market; it also offers the examination of the global market. To make the report more potent and easy to understand, it consists of info graphics and diagrams. Furthermore, it has different policies and development plans which are presented in summary. It analyzes the technical barriers, other issues, and cost-effectiveness affecting the market.

Global Precision Medicine Software Market Research Report 2020 carries in-depth case studies on the various countries which are involved in the Precision Medicine Software market. The report is segmented according to usage wherever applicable and the report offers all this information for all major countries and associations. It offers an analysis of the technical barriers, other issues, and cost-effectiveness affecting the market. Important contents analyzed and discussed in the report include market size, operation situation, and current & future development trends of the market, market segments, business development, and consumption tendencies. Moreover, the report includes the list of major companies/competitors and their competition data that helps the user to determine their current position in the market and take corrective measures to maintain or increase their share holds.

What questions does the Precision Medicine Software market report answer pertaining to the regional reach of the industry

The report claims to split the regional scope of the Precision Medicine Software market into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America & Middle East and Africa. Which among these regions has been touted to amass the largest market share over the anticipated duration

How do the sales figures look at present How does the sales scenario look for the future

Considering the present scenario, how much revenue will each region attain by the end of the forecast period

How much is the market share that each of these regions has accumulated presently

How much is the growth rate that each topography will depict over the predicted timeline

A short overview of the Precision Medicine Software market scope:

Global market remuneration

Overall projected growth rate

Industry trends

Competitive scope

Product range

Application landscape

Supplier analysis

Marketing channel trends Now and later

Sales channel evaluation

Market Competition Trend

Market Concentration Rate

Reasons for Buying this Report

This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics

It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth

It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow

It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future

It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors

It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments

TABLE OF CONTENT:

Chapter 1:Precision Medicine Software Market Overview

Chapter 2: Global Economic Impact on Industry

Chapter 3:Precision Medicine Software Market Competition by Manufacturers

Chapter 4: Global Production, Revenue (Value) by Region

Chapter 5: Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Chapter 6: Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type

Chapter 7: Global Market Analysis by Application

Chapter 8: Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Chapter 9: Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers

Chapter 10: Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Chapter 11: Precision Medicine Software Market Effect Factors Analysis

Chapter 12: GlobalPrecision Medicine Software Market Forecast to 2027

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The rest is here:
Precision Medicine Software Market to See Massive Growth by 2026| Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen, Roper Technologies, Fabric Genomics, Foundation...

COVID-19 may be here to stay, even after a vaccine – Burlington Hawk Eye

The debate over when to reopen states amid the coronavirus pandemic has escalated quickly.

Frustration with the extended quarantine is mounting on social media, and residents around the country have defied social distancing orders to attend rallies demanding an easing of restrictions.

Protesters say the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed enough to justify reopening, given the mounting economic and health impacts.

One viral Facebook post making the case to move toward reopening in Wisconsin says we need to get used to living in a world with COVID-19.

It was posted April 26 by Dr. David Murdock, a research cardiologist with the Aspirus health system in Wausau who was placed on leave after attending an April 19 reopen rally.

The consensus medical view is that this virus is here to stay. In other words, this virus cannot be defeated simply by staying inside for a couple of months, wrote Murdock, who said he was observing from the rear of the rally at a safe distance to gather material for a memoir. The world will likely see periodic outbreaks, and we need to accept that and be prepared to deal with COVID long term.

Murdock makes an array of points in the wide-ranging post, which has been shared more than 2,000 times. But were especially interested in the claim about the longevity of COVID-19.

Of course, the Safer at Home order from Gov. Tony Evers and similar efforts across the country, including guidance from President Donald Trump is not designed to eradicate the disease. It was implemented to slow the spread so hospitals arent overwhelmed.

Claim: COVID-19 is 'here to stay'

Many experts have said a true return to normalcy likely isnt possible until a vaccine is widely available, which could be a year or more.

"We're going to probably all need to be used to social distancing for the next 12 to 18 months," John Raymond, CEO of the Medical College of Wisconsin, said during an April 27 online briefing for the Greater Milwaukee Committee. Until hopefully we have an effective vaccine, it's likely we're going to be living with COVID-19.

But a vaccine doesnt necessarily mean the end of COVID-19.

Absent a vaccine, I think it would quite likely become like seasonal flu or perhaps like some of the other coronaviruses that we are familiar with, said Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard Universitys School of Public Health. It is entirely plausible that this could become part of our regular landscape of respiratory viraI infections.

The vaccine he references would be a theoretical one that is 100% effective and gives lifelong immunity. But vaccines are almost never perfect, notes Barry Bloom, a professor of public health at Harvard.

Bloom also expressed concern over the volume of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations on social media, which include a host of conspiracy theories about pushing people to vaccinate and concerns about how the vaccines may be dangerous. That could affect willingness to take a vaccine once its available.

The vaccine is only a tool if its used, Bloom said.

What we dont know

Hanage said an array of key unknowns will determine the long-term future of COVID-19:

Whether people can get reinfected, and how severe those recurrences would be;

How much immunity results from minor infections; and

How the summer warm-up alters infectiousness (based on both peoples behavior and the reaction of the virus itself; generally, coronaviruses dont survive as long in warmer weather).

Even if the virus does stick around, though, it may not be the threat it is today.

If that immunity is not very long-lasting and we have good reason from other coronaviruses including the original SARS, that it wont be what type of infections will people have when their immunity starts to wane? Hanage said. The first thing to say is we dont know, but I think its also plausible to suggest they might be milder.

Its worth noting that SARS a disease caused by a coronavirus that killed 774 during a 2003 outbreak has been eradicated. But there are key differences that make COVID-19 a more formidable foe.

In a March 5 article for The Lancet medical journal, Annelies Wilder-Smith noted COVID-19 can be passed on by those with minor symptoms or none at all; SARS patients generally werent contagious until they had severe symptoms. And COVID-19 is more easily transmitted and has had a more prevalent community spread.

The virus remains, and we need to learn how to deal with it, said Wilder-Smith, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Certainly lockdown is only a temporary solution whilst we gear up to provide the true solution. Yes, we need to prepare for this reality.

Charles Branas, chair of the epidemiology department at Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health, said eradicating the virus like we did with smallpox will be challenging, to say the least. Ali Khan, dean of the College of Public Health and professor of epidemiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said COVID-19 sticking around is likely, but not inevitable.

Khan noted that some countries already are attempting to eliminate the virus. China, New Zealand, Australia and Vietnam have all set a goal of not just containment, but elimination. The New York Times reported April 24 that the adjoining nations of Australia and New Zealand are seeing just a handful of new infections each day and closing in on their extraordinary goal.

Our ruling: True

Based on what we know now, we rate this claim as TRUE. Experts say its still too early to know this with complete certainty, since much remains unknown about the nature of immunity. And we have no clue how effective a future vaccine may be. But a best guess at this point is that COVID-19 could indeed stick around long-term, waxing and waning similar to the seasonal flu. Experts say theres also reason to believe that lingering version could be less severe, though.

Contact Eric Litke at (414) 225-5061 or elitke@jrn.com.

More:
COVID-19 may be here to stay, even after a vaccine - Burlington Hawk Eye

New Study Links The Love Hormone To Our Digestion – Longevity LIVE – Longevity LIVE

Many benefits of the love hormone

Oxytocin, an anti-stress, or love hormone, has many benefits. Its released from the hypothalamus in the brain which acts to counteract the effects of stress. Oxytocin is a hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter. It also plays an important role in reproduction. In females, the hormone triggers labor and the release of breast milk. In males, oxytocin helps move sperm.

Oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin are often referred to as our happy hormones. You know the feeling when youre attracted to another person, your brain releases dopamine. Your serotonin levels increase, and oxytocin is produced. This causes you to feel a surge of positive emotion.

For a long time, the actions of the love hormone were believed to occur due to its release into the blood with only minor effects on the nerves within the brain that regulate gastrointestinal functions. Penn State University used new ways to manipulate the neurons and nerves (neuro-circuits) that oxytocin released from the hypothalamus acts upon. It also measured the effects on the response of gastric emptying to stress. They reported that, contrary to previous assumptions, these oxytocin circuits play a major role in the response of the stomach to stress. Indeed, activation of these oxytocin circuits reversed the delay in gastric emptying that occurs normally in response to stress. It does so by increasing muscle contractions (motility) of the stomach, while inhibition of these neuro-circuits prevented adaptation to stress.

The study made use of cutting-edge tools to allow selective manipulation of circuits that receive hypothalamic oxytocin inputs together with simultaneous measurements of gastric emptying and motility in response to stress. Acute stress, appropriate adaptation to stress, and inappropriate adaptation to stress. The authors infected neurons (in rats) controlling the oxytocin nerves and neuro-circuits with novel viruses that allowed them to be activated or inhibited and measured muscle activity in the stomach, as well as gastric emptying (the time for food to leave the stomach).

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New Study Links The Love Hormone To Our Digestion - Longevity LIVE - Longevity LIVE

Key End-use Industries to Surge Sales of Pearl Extract During the Forecast Period – Cole of Duty

Introduction:

Skincare market has witnessed immense growth over the past years with its popularity growing day by day. For years manufacturers of skin care products are focusing on introducing skin care products with natural and organic ingredients. This includes natural ingredients such as fruits and plants extract or even mud. Apart from this, there has also been growing demand for products such as pearl extracts which consist of essential amino acids that help skin to look youthful. The nacre of the pearl helps stimulate the metabolic activities of the genetic material in the cell thus accelerating the cell regeneration process. All types of mollusks can produce peal extract, however, two groups of pearls known as bivalves or clams can produce nacreous pearls which are highly significant forms of pearls produced. Pearl extracts are an excellent alternative for various types of synthetic skin care products and are widely used for acne treatment. The global pearl extract market is expected to witness significant growth in the near future due to its extensive benefits in the skincare space.

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Pearl Extract Market Segmentation

Global pearl extract market is segmented on the basis of source, end use, and sales channel. On the basis of source, the global pearl extract market is segmented into, freshwater pearls and saltwater pearls. Pearl extract obtained from freshwater is of great significance and hence would contribute a significant market share in the global pearl extract market. A wide variety of pearl extracts have been introduced in the recent past years to help deal with skin care problems thus accelerating the market growth of the pearl extracts market. On the basis of end use the global pearl extract market is segmented into, cosmetic industry, medical industry and other industries. Cosmetic industry segment can be further sub-segmented into, skin moisturizers, skin whitener, skin repair, and others. In medicine, pearl extract is widely used as anti-inflammatory and detoxification agent. The global pearl extract market is expected to witness significant revenue generation over the forecast period. On the basis of sales channel, the global pearl extract market is segmented into, direct and indirect sales channels.

On the basis of the region, the global pearl extract market is segmented into, North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. Europe is estimated to account for the largest market share in the global pearl extract market as growing number of manufacturers of skin care products are realizing the benefits of pearl extract and hence are incorporating it into their products thus, contributing towards the market growth. Asia Pacific and North America market are expected to account for a considerable market share in the global pearl extract market. Pearl extracts are aragonite (CaCO3) and traces of conchiolin, a silk-fibroin like compound which make it extremely beneficial in the skin and medical treatment. For example, pearl extract can be helpful for individuals with low calcium content and improve the condition called osteoporosis. Japan is one of the largest pearl producers in Asia Pacific market with Australia, Philippines, Myanmar, and Malaysia being the other major producers.

Pearl Extract Market Global Market Trends and Market Drivers:

Pearl extract is widely used as an extremely important ingredient in a number of skin care applications and constitutes a range of anti-aging and anti-acne benefits. The pearl extract powder is either available in the form of oral tablets or as an ingredient in a number of applications. Increasing awareness with respect to the essential benefits of pearl extracts in skin care industry is expected to result in its accelerated market revenues over the forecast period. Pearl extracts provide anti-inflammatory, moisturizing, skin-replenishing, anti-infective properties resulting in youthful skin and glow. Pearl extract works by promoting skin regeneration thus slowing the ageing process and delivering younger natural skin. Increasing demand for natural skin care products is expected to contribute towards increasing market revenues for pearl extract market. However, lack of supply and high prices of pearl extracts is expected to hamper the overall market growth over the forecast period.

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Pearl Extract Market Key Players:

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Key End-use Industries to Surge Sales of Pearl Extract During the Forecast Period - Cole of Duty

Covid-19 Reignites a Contentious Debate Over Bats and Disease – Undark Magazine

In the past few months, Arinjay Banerjee has gotten an unexpected taste of Internet fame.

Since December, when news of Covid-19 began to shudder across the world, Banerjee who studies the immune systems of bats at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada has pivoted his research to focus on SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus behind the pandemic. Now among the small minority of scientists still regularly doing laboratory experiments, hes watched his Twitter following grow and his email inbox fill, often with words of encouragement and queries about how and when the virus will be stopped.

But not all the messages Banerjee gets are positive. You cant even imagine the range, he says. Some even include statements like, You guys have been working with bats, you guys made Covid-19 or SARS-2. Or, The reason you have isolated this is because you have it in your lab.

These alarmist (and unfounded) accusations are neither new nor exclusive to Banerjee and his colleagues. Many researchers think the negative attention is spurred at least in part by widespread fear of bats a group of mammals that, in the past several decades, have been repeatedly linked to the emergence of viral diseases, including SARS, MERS, and most recently, Covid-19.

Scientists have suspected for years that bats have struck a strange armistice with some of natures deadliest viral killers. Bats that carry infamous pathogens like Ebola, Hendra, Marburg, and Nipah rarely if ever fall ill, or at least show obvious symptoms. Even bats that contract rabies, which is almost always lethal to animals when left untreated, can sometimes emerge from the infection unscathed.

This remarkable resilience has drawn the attention of scientists eager to unravel the secrets of bats evolutionary dtente with disease a relationship that could someday yield novel therapies to shore up our own antiviral defenses. But its also made bats the targets of loathing among those who consider them little more than stealthy pests teeming with zoonoses, or diseases that can pass from animals to humans. Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, bats have been slandered on social media, targeted for capture or cullings, and even reportedly burned out of roosts actions that imperil a group of animals vital to ecosystems around the world, Banerjee and other researchers say.

Scientists have suspected for years that bats have struck a strange armistice with some of natures deadliest viral killers.

Communicating research findings about bats and viruses without fueling demonization has always been tricky, says Hannah Frank, an evolutionary ecologist at Stanford University. Thats become especially true in the midst of a pandemic with likely zoonotic origins. Through the invasion and destruction of the worlds wild spaces, humans have driven their own exposures to animal pathogens a cycle thats only fueled when people act on bat-based fears. But in a moment like this, Frank says, messages like these are easily lost.

Rather than vilifying bats, perhaps humans should consider them our allies in the fight against disease, says David Schneider, a disease ecologist at Stanford University. I always hope, you know, how can we become more bat-like? Thats the way to do it.

The worlds first proper bat likely evolved several tens of millions of years ago, when a lone branch on the mammalian tree converted forelimbs into wings. In the millennia since, bats have splintered into more than 1,400 species nearly a quarter of Earths modern known mammals and expanded to every continent except for Antarctica. They pollinate plants, disperse seeds, and gobble up insect pests including bugs like mosquitoes that themselves spread disease. In many ways, bats are helping us, even though were often not helping them, says Kate Langwig, a disease ecologist and bat conservationist at Virginia Tech.

Given this staggering diversity, its important to avoid attributing traits to bats as a whole, says Kristen Lear, a bat conservationist at the University of Georgia. (Some species, Frank points out, havent shared a common ancestor in more than 50 million years, making them more evolutionarily distant from each other than humans are from howler monkeys.)

Still, across species, bats seem to accomplish what many other creatures cant. Winged yet warm-blooded, theyre the only mammals that fly. They age well, in some cases outliving similarly sized mammals like mice by several decades. Several bat species are also resistant to a multitude of ailments, from cancers to infectious fevers that prove devastating to other species, including humans.

Curiously, the apparent lack of sickness in bats doesnt seem attributable to an immunity to infection. Many of the viruses that have plagued humans in recent decades are found in bats, too just absent typical symptoms.

Raina Plowright, a disease ecologist at Montana State University, thinks this oddity may be a byproduct of bats foray into the skies. Flight is strenuous, ratcheting a bats metabolism roughly 15 times above its resting state, sometimes for prolonged periods of nighttime travel. Such exertion takes a toll at even the molecular level, triggering the production of harmful chemicals that can damage the DNA that cells need to function and survive. To cope, bats have apparently evolved sophisticated ways to rein in these destructive substances and stitch battered bits of genetic material back together.

These repair systems appear to be multifunctional, also protecting bats from some of the symptoms of infectious disease, says Michelle Baker, a bat immunologist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO, an Australian federal government agency for scientific research. When most mammals detect a viral invader, theyll battle it with inflammation, a wildfire-like weapon that helps purge the pathogen from the body but can also wreak havoc on the hosts own tissues. Bats, on the other hand, are able to tamp down these risky responses. Part of this dial-down may overlap with ways they mitigate the detriments of flight; bat cells also seem to have lost some of the machinery required to kick inflammatory systems into gear.

A lesser long-nosed bat, fresh from feeding on the nectar of an agave, a plant that depends on bats for pollination. Visual: National Park Service

On top of this, laboratory experiments suggest that bats bodies may continuously churn out powerful proteins that instruct cells to block parts of the viral life cycle, giving them a head start on combating infection, Baker says. Scientists theorize that, with this potent combination of tactics, bats may have hit an immunological sweet spot, mounting a response that keeps invaders at bay without causing unnecessary harm to their own bodies.

To keep their infective skills sharp, viruses that target bats have devised ways to counteract these unique bat properties, including evolving powerful molecular tools that allow them to rapidly spread from cell to cell, says Cara Brook, a disease ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Accustomed to waging war with the robust defenses of bats, these pathogens can then devastate other species with immune systems that are less resistant to viruses a bit like a seasoned swordsman parrying with an untrained apprentice.

Bats are tough to study under the best of circumstances: They are both notoriously challenging to monitor in the wild and ill-suited to life in the lab. Many of the conclusions scientists have drawn about bat biology are tentative, and its possible some will only apply to the select species that scientists have so far managed to snare, says Vikram Misra, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewans Western College of Veterinary Medicine.

It could be, for instance, that viruses do cause illnesses in bats just not in a way that humans have yet detected, Langwig says: Just because a bat is flying around happily, doesnt necessarily mean its feeling totally great.

Other factors beyond immunology play into bat disease dynamics as well. In combination with their longevity and far-ranging flight, the highly social lifestyles of many bats bring them into regular and close contact with each other, offering ample opportunity for infections to spread. All of these complex traits are variables ecologists have only begun to understand.

Horseshoe bats may be among the animal reservoirs that carry SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the Covid-19 pandemic, in the wild.

Visual: Aditya Joshi / Wikimedia Commons

Researchers also disagree on whether bats disproportionately harbor viruses with the potential to cause illness in humans. While a 2017 study concluded that bats play host to more zoonoses than other mammals, another analysis published in April found that they were unexceptional in their propensity to carry viruses of human concern. Perhaps the preponderance of new virus discoveries in bats, the latter group suggested, could be chalked up to a lack of studies in other animals.

None of that necessarily detracts from the animals curious relationship with viruses, says Banerjee, who sees the bat as a biomedical musefor future antiviral treatments. The vast majority of microbes that exist in wildlife, including in bats, pose no threat to humans. But bat-borne infections can still inform a path to peaceful coexistence with viruses and other disease-causing microbes.

In the rare instances where a pathogen does cross the species divide, bats are almost never to blame, Plowright says. Many cultures have a long history of hunting and eating bats and other animals for subsistence. But in recent decades, other human interactions with wild species have escalated to an unprecedented degree as urban areas balloon, forests fragment, and the global wildlife trade including the sale of exotic luxury meats booms.

When bat viruses do make the hop to humans, its almost always because people have encroached into the territory of animals not the other way around. Cross-species spillovers, which require a pathogen to be compatible with two often genetically dissimilar hosts in close contact, are extremely uncommon. But by charging into wild spaces, we humans put ourselves in harms way, says Dan Crowley, a disease ecologist at Montana State University. If I get drunk and walk in front of a train, Im not going to blame the train.

As economic development continues to expand, so too will the number of infectious diseases that plague our population, Plowright says. We are driving these species to the edge of their ability to survive, she says. Theres nothing thats untouched anymore.

Pressures like habitat loss or hunting can also drive animals into new environments and cause them undue stress. This in turn hamstrings their immune defenses and increases the likelihood that theyll shed pathogens into their surroundings. By agitating bats, were just making it much more likely for that perfect storm to happen, Misra says.

But by charging into wild spaces, we humans put ourselves in harms way, says one expert.

All this makes the recent glut of anti-bat sentiment all the more concerning, Lear says. Based on media reports, violent incidents targeting these creatures appear to have escalated in frequency since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic putting aggressors in even closer contact with the very viruses they fear. These attacks, which have included attempted exterminations by fire, are also occurring in the absence of definitive evidence that SARS-CoV-2 passed directly from bats to humans; so far, preliminary studies suggest that at least one intermediate host, perhaps a pangolin, played a role in ferrying the pathogen to people.

Schneider draws a parallel to Isaac Asimovs Hostess, a 1951 science fiction short story that describes the spread of a mysterious, deadly disease among several alien races that have come to visit Earth. Humans, it turns out, are the source of the infection, which has become a natural and largely unnoticeable part of their existence but swiftly kills extraterrestrial creatures.

We dont know the silent viruses that we carry, Schneider says.

So perhaps bats shouldnt be faulted for the company they keep, Langwig says. In fact, they may now need protection more than ever before. In April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and International Union for the Conservation of Nature both recommended a suspension of fieldwork involving direct interaction with wild bats, out of concern that humans could spread SARS-CoV-2 to North American species. Though a bat version of Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is highly unlikely given these animals viral history, bats do suffer their own infectious illnesses, including white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has devastated populations across the continent.

Halts to bat research wont last forever. But Langwig and Lear both worry that even a brief pause in research, including projects focused on bat conservation, could further jeopardize vulnerable species and, by extension, the ecosystems they support. Bats need to be kept safe, Lear says, especially when they still have so much to teach us.

There is a huge opportunity there to say, O.K, they can do it, how can we then do it too? she says of their ability to coexist with viruses. So, dont kill bats. They might actually be the key to learning how to fight these viruses in the future.

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Covid-19 Reignites a Contentious Debate Over Bats and Disease - Undark Magazine

What Iridology And Sclerology Reveal About Your Eye Health – Longevity LIVE

The word sclerology refers to the study of the hard, firm, fibrous, outer coat of your eye. This is known as the white of the eye, or the sclera. It also verifies and enhances data from iridology and other evaluation techniques. Such as reflexology, kinesiology, acupuncture and the study of meridians. The two work together to validate each others information.

But more than the study of the white part of the eye. Sclerology is a method of interpreting the red lines, coloration and markings in the sclera as they relate reflexively to your whole bodys health.

Whole body health means the inter-working, mutual support, interrelatedness, cause-and-effect relationships, and ultimately the balance between:

The sclera reveals many forms of disease, stresses, imbalances and energy blockages, wherever they originate. The characteristics of the red lines and markings that appear, disappear and reappear in the sclera are all signals of your state of health.

Health is much more than the absence of disease. It is a dynamic, vital, balanced, slightly ecstatic and aware state of being. This results from a relaxed and harmonious functioning of all the bodies or levels of the individual.

Dr Isabella van Niekerk is an iridologist at Rubicon Persona Clinic. She qualified as a Natural Practitioner in 2004 when she completed B.A.S.M. with the University of Alternative Medicine in India, as well as M.D.(A.M.), Ph.D (A.M.) Recently, she completed her Bachelors degree in Psychotherapy and Counseling. She also has her Bachelors in Hypnotherapy. Dr. van Niekerk is registered with EPASA. These studies qualified her to practice in all disciplines of Naturopathy and related therapies.

We all need to be aware of how prepared our immune systems are to defend us against COVID-19. Currently, theres no vaccine or defense. Thankfully, were gifted with a complex immune system, or cellular defense mechanisms. It springs into action when a toxin or pathogen (viruses and bacteria) overwhelms the body. Dr. Yael Joffe, is the Chief Science Officer at 3X4 Genetics.

She says COVID-19 can be damaging and may be fatal. The virus triggers the hosts immune system and causes the body to react. Knowing how your immune system works at a genetic level may give you some answers you need to improve your odds of recovering from or even avoiding being infected with a virus like COVID-19.

Dr. Joffe explains: The way these mechanisms act can differ from person-to-person because of your genes. By taking a genetic test you will then be able to tell how ready your immune system is, and whether your cellular defense processes work optimally.

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13 Benefits Of Running And Jogging For Your Health And Well-Being – Women’s Health

Yoshiyoshi HirokawaGetty Images

"I really should run more." I've said it, you've said it, we've ALL said it. I know there are many benefits of runningand that I feel ~gooood~ after doing itbut I often struggle to lace up my sneakers and get going.

I think people have a love-hate relationship with running because it can be intimidating to start, says Peloton tread instructor Jess Sims. And to that I say, just start! Take some pressure off yourself.

If even the thought of a 20-minute run feels daunting, start with just two minutes of running at a time with a minute of walking in between, Sims suggests.

Keep your pace easy enough that you could chat with a friend and slowly increase your running time and you'll enjoy every step before you know it. "Start with two times a week, and then move to three or four, says Sims.

As you find your groove, rest assured that you'll reap major benefits regardless of whether you log miles outside or on the tread (though a little fresh air certainly never hurt anyone).

But just how great is this free, accessible form of exercise (all you need is a pair of sneakers and yourself, after all) for you, really? Let me count the ways. Here, experts break down 13 seriously impressive benefits of running that'll convince you to lace up, stat.

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1Running slashes your risk of heart disease.

Good news for your ticker: Running could cut your risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 45 percent, according to research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

How? Running helps improve blood pressure, HDL (good) cholesterol, and blood sugar sensitivity, explains Janet Hamilton, CSCS, an exercise physiologist at Running Strong in Atlanta. All of these factors play a role in cardiovascular health.

2It also burns calories like crazy.

Of course, the calories you burn running depend on a few variables, including your weight, sex, and age, as well as the weather, terrain, altitude, and effort you put into each step, says certified running coach Corky Corkum, CPT, Variis Precision Run Instructor. On average, most people lacing up burn about 100 calories per mile. Not bad, eh?

3Running strengthens your joints.

Don't let that "running is rough on your joints" mumbo-jumbo fool you. There is always a lot of commentary around the negative effects of running on knees and joints, but there is actually a lower prevalence of hip and knee arthritis amongst active marathon runners, says Corkum. (Yep, research published in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery backs this up, finding no correlation between running history and arthritis.)

Instead, the study concluded that hip and knee arthritis is highly dependent on age, family history, and surgical history, Corkum says.

4It relieves stress.

If yoga isn't your thing, running can work wonders for stress relief. Running reduces stress because you need to be super present while doing it, says Sims. I use running as a form of meditation, in which I really focus on my breath, sometimes even saying a mantra on the inhales and exhales. Running also allows me to separate myself from the other stresses of the day, giving me an opportunity to focus on bettering myself and enjoying a fun playlist.

Need more convincing? Running actually mitigates the effects of long-term chronic stress on the brain, according to a recent study published in a volume of Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Better grab those sneaks!

5It keeps your peepers healthy, too.

Your eyes are the window to your health, and, like your heart, affected by conditions like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. As it helps ward off these chronic issues, running may also lower your risk for developing vision-clouding cataracts, too, says research published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

6Running improves your follow-through (in all aspects of life).

If you can power through a run, you can power through anything. Really. Research out of the University of Iowa shows that since cardio exercise requires extended and consistent effort (hello, long, hot runs), doing it regularly can improve your ability to stick through lengthy and arduous to-do's. Big annoying work project coming up? Your running routine has got your back.

7It strengthens your bones big time.

Most people consider bones as strong and unchanging. However, after age 30, there is significant potential for decreases in bone density, says Sims. This sounds scary, but we are in luck! Bones are living things, and therefore get stronger when a forcelike runningstimulates growth.

That's right; High-impact exercise (like running!) spurs bone growth and promotes healthy bone mineral density. It's a must if you want to avoid fractures and stay mobile your whole life long.

8Running may even reduce your risk of cancer.

Regular exercise has long been associated with a lower risk of certain cancersa link highlighted by a massive Journal of Nutrition review of 170 studies. The National Cancer Institute suggests that high levels of physical activity may decrease your risk of bladder, breast, endometrial, colon, and gastric cancers, in particular.

Regardless of your access to gyms or fitness classes (or how much money you can invest in getting sweaty), running is a surefire way to move your body and protect your long-term health.

9It can get you outside.

If you don't think that the amount of time you spend outdoors impacts your well-being, let's talk about vitamin D. Our primary source of this important vitamin, which helps keep your bones healthy, your mood lifted, and your immune system humming, is the sunwhich is why research published in the Journal of Pharmacology and Pharamacotherapeutics suggests that the more time you log outside, the better.

This isnt to say that running on the treadmill won't do you good, though. Outdoor and indoor running can truly work together," says Corkum. "The treadmill can be an amazing training tool; it keeps a runner honest in pacing and offers a safe and temperature-controlled space to run. She encourages new runners to get outside and to hit the tread as they please as they gain strength and form awareness.

10Truth: Running boosts your confidence.

If you need a reminder that you're da bomb dot com, go for a run. Running boosts your confidence because you're physically doing something tough, something that you might never have thought was possible one month (or even six months) earlier, says Sims.

That translates to everything else in your life," she says. "How you do anything is how you do everything. We practice doing hard things in workouts so that we can gain the confidence to do hard things elsewhere. 'Nuff said.

11It can even help you sleep better.

Researchers at John Hopkins Medical Center found that cardiovascular exercise can help you fall asleep faster and improve sleep qualityas long as you give yourself a few hours afterward to wind down for bed.

Sims has personally experienced this payoff: Running helps you fall asleep faster, which in turn allows you to sleep more, she says. And, bonus: The more you sleep, the more likely you are to stick with an exercise routine!

12Running can actually stimulate memory and learning.

Running can help new nutrient-transporting blood vessels grow, blunt the brain's response to physical and emotional stress, and even promote neurogenesis, the process of creating new brain cells, according to Johns Hopkins Medical school professor of neuroscience David J. Linden, PhD.

The result, he says: Pounding pavement can have positive, long-lasting effects on the hippocampus, a.k.a. the part of your brain that aids in memory and learning.

13Ultimately, running may lengthen your lifespan.

If you haven't noticed by now, running comes with a ton of mind and body benefitsand they all add up to one majorly impressive perk: a longer life.

When Stanford University School of Medicine researchers followed up with participants in a study about running's influence on health after 21 years, 85 percent of runners were still alive compared to just 66 percent of non-runners, suggesting a connection between running and longevity. Now that's a link any runner will want to brag about, right?

The bottom line: Running offers a multitude of benefits for both your body and your mindincluding everything from heart health to reduced stressas long as you pace yourself and enjoy the ride.

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The Year Is 2021Heres What Your Hair Salon Experience Looks Like – Cosmopolitan.com

Your stylist is ready for you now.Thanks.

You hang up the phone and step out of your car, sliding on your face mask. An assistant stands guard just inside the hair salon, suited up in full PPE and holding a non-contact thermometer. As she comes outside to take your temperature, she runs through the required COVID-19 screening questionnaire and confirms youve prepaid for your appointment, as is now standard with touchless pay protocols. Satisfied, she lets you through the door, directing you first to the hand-sanitizing station before bringing you straight to a styling chair.

The salons in 2021 are eerily quietthe steady hum of blow dryers absent amidst ongoing debates over their risk in spreading germs. Gone are the waiting areas, the receptionists, the free drinks, and the magazines fanned out on every surface. Nobody is within ten feet of you except your stylist, who is swaddled in a mask, face shield, plastic apron, and gloves.

Music still pumps through speakers, but without the idle chatter of a full, bustling salon (all of which are still operating at 50 percent capacity), the experience feels somewhat dulled. And yet, to you, this stilted experience is already the new normthis is the hair salon of the foreseeable future.

If this all sounds a little melodramatic, like some bad Black Mirror fanfictionyoud be correct. It is dramatic. And yet, its exactly whats already happening across the country today as hair salons begin to nervously re-open without a COVID-19 vaccineor even clear, widespread protocolsin sight.

In states where restrictions are gradually being lifted, salons are now implementing new guidelines that range from the basic (e.g., masks, sanitizing, social distancing), to the extra cautious (no large personal items, no accompanied guests or kids, no blow-drying, no hair-washing)all protocols that reflect those currently being enforced around the world.

In Germany, new salon regulations restrict face-to-face interactionsdiscussions between stylists and clients must take place in the mirror, and front-facing lash and eyebrow tints are temporarily banned. In London, some salons are prohibiting jewelry and requiring cell phones be placed in plastic bags upon arrival, while other salons in Italy and Paris are limiting appointments to one client at a time, or booking appointments starting at 5 a.m. to offset capacity restrictions. In the U.S., some salons are even setting 30-minute timers per appointment to minimize exposure risks.

And wherever you fall on the Well, I think spectrum, the reality is the same: Nobody knows enough right now to know which protocols are potentially overkill and which arent, says Jaimie Meyer, MD, an infectious disease doctor and assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine. As long as theres a theoretical risk for COVID, the general concept in public health is better safe than sorry. Does that mean in six months or a year, salons will still be under the same intense restrictions as they are today? No, not necessarily. But alsoyeah, maybe.

"I think even next year, the salon experience wont necessarily look like anything what were used to"

Salons are specifically tricky because they require close contact for an extended period of time in an indoor spaceall things were trying to avoid when minimizing risk, says Irfan N. Hafiz, an infectious disease doctor at Northwestern Medicine. And although he acknowledges that "guidance on salons will likely change in the coming months (whether for better or worse is yet to be seen), these concerns inherent to salons arent going to go away. Unless, of course, stylists somehow invent a rapid, open-air, contact-less hair servicefrom six feet away.

Although its nice to imagine a scenario in which you head back to the salon this summer or fall, mask-free and ready to hang like its 2019, it frankly wont be the reality. The idea is youre responding to data on a 14-day or monthly basis, says Dr. Meyer. As you relax certain restrictions, you watch to see if cases declinein which case you can relax even moreor to see if theres a huge uptick in cases, in which case you pull back again. But until we know more about, well, everything, experts agree salons wont resemble anything close to normal for a very long time.

And while a future of needing to pay ahead of your appointment, or wear a mask, or skip the post-cut blow-dry might seem like a major inconvenience to you and seemingly you alone, its important to think of how these restrictions will also affect the stylists who are exposing themselves every day for your hair. Because as much as youll miss the normalcy of the old salon experience, so will theyespecially when these new protocols will directly impact their financial stability, the longevity of their careers, and even their day-to-day sanity.

While you chill in your car waiting for your appointment, your stylist is frantically disinfecting every surface from her previous clientalone. Her assistant is gone, laid off months ago due to pay cuts and space limitations. Combs, tools, and scissors are swiftly soaked and scrubbed in hospital-grade disinfectant, while chairs, bottles, door handles, sinks, that ledge someone briefly rested their phone on, are all wiped down with industrial sanitizer. A new apron and gloves are donned, fresh tools are replaced.

By the time you walk through the salon, your stylist has only just finished her new side gig as both an assistant and a cleaner. Shes tired. Her plastic face shield digs into her head, and her safety mask leaves her sweating and mildly anxious all day. She needs to work longer hours each week to make up for her reduced client capacity, and when shes not working, shes also worrying about those hours being cut.

Or worrying about her salon closing. Or worrying about her own health, or the health of her clients, or about the assistants and stylists who are jobless and may stay jobless for months or years. But shes also thankful to be back at work in any capacity, when so many salons temporarily closed in 2020 and never re-opened again.

Although data doesnt yet exist on how COVID-19 has affected hair salons around the countryand likely wont for years to comestylists say the future of their industry is bleak. Its going to be really telling in the next year what salons can survive this, says Sally Hershberger, celeb hairstylist and founder of Sally Hershberger salons. At the end of the day, with all of these restrictions, your business is going to be cut by 50 percent for who knows how long.

And even though, sure, regulations might start to ease in the coming months, the damage to these businesses will have already been done: "I think a huge number of salons just wont be able to recover, says Hershberger.

For the salons who do make it through, their reduced capacity and added overhead costs of PPE, cleaning supplies, and renovations could likely mean higher prices and longer wait times for you (think months-long waiting lists, reduced services, and steeper fees for cuts and colors). I think even next year, the salon experience wont necessarily look like anything what were used to, says Jacob Khan, hairstylist and founder of Jacob K Hair in Atlanta, GA.

In 2021, the buzzy energy of whirring tools, conspiratorial gossip, and selfie-taking giddiness will be stilled, and the communal vibes of beauty parlors past, will, for the time being, be gone. But, as with all of the rapid changes in the post-pandemic world, youll already be used to this new norm by the time it happens. You will sit in your disposable paper gown, muffled-chatting with your stylist, in a sterile salon surrounded by no one, and you will almost forget how things used to be.

"As long as theres a theoretical risk for COVID, the general concept in public health is better safe than sorry."

Of course, this is all still theoretical (and also the very least distressing side effect of this deadly virus). Not one of the seven infectious disease doctors, professors, hairstylists, or public health officials* who helped me paint this speculative picture claimed to see the future (sadly), and as we all know by now, the facts of this pandemic are rapidly changing every day.

Perhaps, by 2021, well all have been proven wrongin fact, I hope we are. But until then, its worth preparing for the possibility that the salon experience youre holding out for may not be coming back. The reality is that our future 'normal' is never going to be our past 'normal,'" says Dr. Irfan. Were all going to have to re-think our new world. And, yeah, that also includes your hair.

*Sources (i.e., not fortune tellers) for this speculative, yet fact-based future include seven people currently living through it all: Sonny S. Patel, a public health executive at Harvard University; Jaimie Meyer, MD, an infectious disease doctor and assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine; Irfan N. Hafiz, an infectious disease doctor at Northwestern Medicine; Joseph G. Allen, assistant professor at Harvards T. H. Chan School of Public Health; Jacob Khan, Goldwell ambassador, hairstylist and owner of Jacob K Hair in Atlanta, GA; Sally Hershberger, celeb hairstylist and founder of Sally Hershberger salons; and Meri Kate OConnor, hairstylist and colorist in Santa Monica, CA

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Is There Bias In How We Judge GMOs? – American Council on Science and Health

Researchers considered that question specifically for new technology foods, like GMOs, where there is a great deal of public opposition. They made use of Amazons Mechanical Turk, the Internet version of college students taking an introduction to psychology. The participants answered questions regarding food crops that were new and old, and were the result of traditional breeding or new technologies, like genetic modification or irradiation. The participants were asked whether they would be willing to consume the product, where it was safe for them or society, and whether it was moral to grow it at all. [1] Here is what they found over a series of studies.

Thesestudies were conducted on US citizens, so while it may well be generalizable to other first-world, Western countries, it may not apply as well to developing countries where adequate nutrition is an over-riding life-changing issue.

People prefer food that has stood the test of time, a heuristic rule that is captured in Talebs Lindy Rule, where old ideas and objects are more resilient to the buffeting winds of change. While some opponents of GMOs argue that they are not safe despite significant testing and can produce examples to prove their point, it is also clear that this cognitive bias, what the researchers termed recency negativity, is also at play. The more widespread acceptance of GMOs or other genetically modified crops may well require the passage of time more than any logical argument.

[1] For example, SP6321 is a domesticated sweet potato (it does not grow wild in nature). Humans changed the DNA of SP 6321 ancestors by selectively breeding only the largest and most drought-resistant sweet potato plants over multiple generations. That DNA is in SP 6321 today and it makes SP 6321 larger and more drought-resistant than many types of wild sweet potatoes. Farmers are just now beginning to grow SP 6321 for human consumption.

[2] While both techniques involve human action, irradiation is an older, lesser-known technology, whereas gene modification has had quite a bit of media and controversy.

Source: Recency Negativity: Newer food crops are evaluated less favorably Appetite DOI: 101.1016/j.appet.2020.104754

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Is There Bias In How We Judge GMOs? - American Council on Science and Health

Big Data in the Healthcare & Pharmaceutical Market Rising Adoption from Small, Medium-sized Enterprises to Fuel Growth – Cole of Duty

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Big Data in the Healthcare & Pharmaceutical Market Rising Adoption from Small, Medium-sized Enterprises to Fuel Growth - Cole of Duty

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How The ‘Lost Art’ Of Breathing Can Impact Sleep And Resilience – NPR

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Breathing is something we take for granted unless we have respiratory problems or are sick or worried about the coronavirus, which attacks the lungs. In the new book "Breath," my guest, journalist James Nestor, writes about many aspects of how we breathe and how we can train ourselves to breathe in ways that may improve our health and the quality of our sleep and decrease anxiety. He reports on why mouth breathing is related to snoring, sleep apnea and other problems, what the nose has that the mouth doesn't, different breathing techniques to destress, reduce blood pressure and balance the nervous system, and how free divers train to expand their lung capacity so that they can dive deep and stay underwater for up to 12 minutes on one breath.

When possible, Nestor's tried what he's written about, including participating in an experiment at Stanford in which his nose was completely plugged for days to test the impact of breathing solely through the mouth. The results were fascinating, but the experience of total mouth breathing was unpleasant and disrupted his sleep. Nestor is also the author of a previous book called "Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, And What The Oceans Tell Us About Ourselves" (ph). And he helped found a research initiative to investigate how sperm whales communicate with each other through clicks.

James Nestor, welcome to FRESH AIR. How are you?

JAMES NESTOR: Doing very well. Thanks so much for having me.

GROSS: Has your research into breathing taking on a slightly different meaning because of COVID-19, because of its respiratory systems and the anxiety that it's creating?

NESTOR: I think the awareness of breathing has definitely increased. When I first started this research several years ago, a lot of my friends were saying, you're writing a book about breathing? I've been breathing my whole life. Why would you want to write a book about that? But now these are the same friends who are seeing how essential respiratory health is in helping us both prevent the onset of many illnesses and to help us get through illnesses like COVID - to help us better get through them.

GROSS: So you had been a mouth breather, and you did some snoring. You had a deviated septum, which was affecting your ability to breathe through your nose because that kind of clogs part of the nose - or blocks part of the nasal passage, I should say. So to understand whether mouth breathing was really a problem, you participated in a study at Stanford University that forced you to breathe through your mouth. Describe what the setup was.

NESTOR: Yeah. So I had been in contact with the chief of rhinology research, Jayakar Nayak, for months and months. We had had several interviews. We'd been talking a lot. And he was telling me all the wonders of nasal breathing and how bad mouth breathing was. And none of that was controversial. That's very well-established now. But nobody really knew how - all the problems of mouth breathing - no one knew how soon those came on.

So I asked him. I said, well, why don't you test it? You're in a position to test it. He's like, how am I going to test it? It would be unethical to ask someone to plug their nose for a certain amount of time and measure what happens. And I said, well, I'll do it. So it was never, like, a "Super Size Me" study. That wasn't our intention. If - 25 to 50% of the population is breathing through their mouth, so I was just lulling myself into a condition I already knew and that so many other people already knew.

So the plan was, for 10 days, I would have silicone plugs up my nose - me and one other subject, a breathing therapist from Sweden; I convinced him to do this study as well. And for the other 10 days, we would change the pathway of how we breathe and breathe through our noses instead of our mouths. So that was it. That was the setup. And you know, we thought that mouth breathing for 10 days was going to be bad, but we had no idea it was going to be so damaging.

GROSS: How bad was it?

NESTOR: (Laughter) Well, I went from snoring a couple minutes a night to - within three days, I was snoring for hours a night. I developed sleep apnea. My stress levels were off the charts. My nervous system was a mess. We had a whole home lab here at my house, so we were testing each other three times a day every day and writing out all of these metrics. We even had - were looking at blood glucose, how that was affected.

So I felt awful. I felt fatigued - snoring, sleep apnea, all the rest - and even performance - athletic performance really decreased as well. And the good thing about this is, I was able to take these god-awful plugs out of my nose and breathe nasally again. And once I did that, snoring disappeared; sleep apnea disappeared; nervous system came back into balance - I mean, completely transformed by just changing the pathway through which we breathed.

GROSS: So what's in the nose that makes nose breathing better than mouth breathing 'cause mouths don't have that stuff?

NESTOR: So the nose filters heat and treats raw air. Most of us know that. But so many of us don't realize - at least, I didn't realize - how it can trigger different hormones to flood into our bodies, how it can lower our blood pressure, how the stages of a woman's menstrual cycle are correlated to different areas of the nose, how it monitors heart rate - on and on and on - even helps store memories. So it's this incredible organ that is not represented in any of the departments of the National Institutes of Health, and this is something that Nayak has, you know, just hammered down over and over again. He's like, why aren't we studying this more? And why don't people - more people realize how important nasal breathing is? So it's - it orchestrates innumerable functions in our body to keep us balanced.

GROSS: What I found most surprising was that the nose actually has erectile tissue like men's and women's genitals.

NESTOR: (Laughter) So the nose is more closely connected to our genitals than any other organ. So it is covered in that same tissue. So when one area gets stimulated, the nose will become stimulated as well. Some people have too close of a connection, where they get stimulated in the southerly regions - they will start uncontrollably sneezing. And this condition is common enough that it was given a name called honeymoon rhinitis. So the...

GROSS: Wow (laughter).

NESTOR: That - the - yeah. This is the weird stuff you never thought you'd discover when you start writing a book about breathing. But another thing that is really fascinating is, that erectile tissue will pulse on its own, so it will close one nostril and allow breath in through the other nostril. Then that other nostril will close and allow breath in. And our bodies do this on their own, and this switching happens between 30 minutes and every three hours.

And a lot of people think - a lot of people who have studied this believe that this is the way that our bodies maintain balance because when we breathe through our right nostril, circulation speeds up; the body gets hotter; cortisol levels increase; blood pressure increases. So breathing through the left will relax us more, so blood pressure will decrease - lowers temperature, cools the body, you know, reduces anxiety as well. So our bodies are naturally doing this. And when we breathe through our mouths, we're denying our bodies the ability to do this and to keep us in balance.

GROSS: But what about if you can't breathe through your nose because either you have a cold or a respiratory illness or you have a bad deviated septum?

NESTOR: Sure. Around 70% of the population has a deviated septum that's clearly visible to the naked eye. So this is just rampant. And I certainly do. When I got a CAT scan of my head, it was an absolute mess. But some conditions are so severe that you will need surgical intervention for sure. But the vast majority are not. And something Nayak kept telling me is, he said, you know, if a sink is clogged in your house, you're going to find a way of unclogging it. The nose should be considered in the same way.

For noses clogged, you need to find a way of unclogging it. You can do that by breathing more through your nose because it's really a use-it-or-lose-it organ. The more you breathe through it, the more you're going to be able to breathe through it. I was just talking to a clinician who's trained something like 7,000 people to nasal breathe. And only four of them could not breathe through their noses after about three weeks of training. So it's really something - the more we focus on it, the more we really concentrate, the more we're able to open it up and to get all those benefits of nasal breathing.

GROSS: So after you do this experiment about breathing exclusively for your - through your mouth, you decided, at night, to try taping your mouth so that you couldn't breathe through your mouth and you'd have to breathe through your nose. How did that go?

NESTOR: (Laughter) Yeah. So this is something - a hack that I had heard about and was extremely skeptical about. It sounded very dangerous to me until I talked to a breathing therapist at Stanford, who said that she had cured her own mouth-breathing by taping her mouth at night, and until I talked to a dentist, who'd been in the field for 20, 30 years who prescribes this to his patients.

Now, I'm not talking about getting a fat piece of duct tape and taping that over your mouth. That's a really bad idea. I'm talking about a teeny piece of surgical tape about the size of a stamp. Imagine, like, a Charlie Chaplin mustache moved down an inch. And my personal experience with this is it has allowed me to sleep so much better, wake up so much more rested and to not have that dry mouth every morning.

GROSS: So with the kind of tape you're talking about, if your mouth really needed to open, it could because that's not - like you said, it's not, like, really strong tape. It's just, like, surgical tape and a little piece of it. So you're not...

NESTOR: Of course.

GROSS: You're not gagging yourself (laughter).

NESTOR: Yeah. And I'm not prescribing - I'm not qualified to...

GROSS: And you're not prescribing it, and neither am I (laughter).

NESTOR: I'm not prescribing anything. No, no, no.

GROSS: Yeah. Yeah.

NESTOR: I'm saying, this personally worked for me. But don't go on YouTube. Don't go on the Internet and see these people with nine pieces of tape over their lower jaw. It's like, bad idea. I've found all you need is a very small piece of tape. And there's even a product out right now that is being sold as a remedy for snoring. And what is it? It's a piece of tape that you put on your lips at night (laughter). So other people - and they've conducted studies to show how effective it is. So this worked well for me. It's worked well for many other people. But I'm not prescribing anything.

GROSS: And I should mention that my guest, James Nestor, is also not a doctor. He's a journalist. And he's reporting on what he's learned by talking to many researchers and doctors and people who practice breathing techniques and teach breathing techniques. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist James Nestor, author of the new book "Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art." We'll talk more after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GERALD CLAYTON'S "ENVISIONINGS")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with journalist James Nestor, author of the new book, "Breath," about what ancient forms of Eastern meditation, as well as new science, tell us about breathing and how, by controlling our breath through various techniques, we can improve our sleep, our health and decrease our anxiety.

Breathing is automatic. But we can control, when we consciously try, the quality of the breath, the length of inhales and exhales, and how deeply or shallowly we breathe. Can you explain why breath would, for instance, affect anxiety and how breathing in certain ways, certain breathing techniques, can decrease anxiety...

NESTOR: Sure.

GROSS: ...Anxiety being a very important subject right now.

NESTOR: So for so many of us, we think that it's just important that we're breathing because if we're breathing, that's good. That means we're alive. If we're not breathing, that's bad, you know, we could be dead. But it's how we take those breaths. We take 25,000 breaths a day. And 30 pounds of air enters and exits our lungs every day. So it's how we take those breaths and the nuances of those breaths that I've found play such an important role in health, happiness and longevity.

So specifically, with anxiety, talked to a neuropsychologist, went out to his lab at the Laureate Institute of Brain Research. And he explained to me that people with anxieties or other fear-based conditions, typically, will breathe way too much. So what happens when you breathe that much is you're constantly putting yourself into a state of stress. So you're stimulating that sympathetic side of the nervous system.

And the way to change that is to breathe deeply, because if you think about it, if you're stressed out - a tiger is going to come get you, you know, you're going to get hit by a car - you're going to breathe, breathe, breathe as much as you can. But by breathing slowly, that is associated with a relaxation response. So the diaphragm lowers. You're allowing more air into your lungs. And your body immediately switches to a relaxed state.

So we may not be able to control the function of our hearts, other organs in our body, but we can control our breathing. And when we control our breathing, we can influence so much of how our bodies operate. And that includes - as a treatment or at least a practice for people with anxieties, depression, just changing their breathing, psychiatrists have found, can have a very transformational effect. It seems so simple to be true. But some of these people have been studying this subject for decades. And that's what they've found.

GROSS: There are many different breathing techniques. There are many different breathing meditation styles. What do they all have in common? Is there something they all have in common in terms of inhale and exhale and the basic principles underneath?

NESTOR: So breathing has been studied for thousands and thousands of years. There are seven books of the Chinese Tao that deal only with breathing, what happens when we do it improperly and all of the benefits we can get by doing it properly. So all of those ways, all of the different practices do have one thing in common. And that's because they allow you to slow down and consciously listen to yourself and feel how breath is affecting you. So there is many different tools in this toolbox. If you want to slow down and become more relaxed, you can exhale longer than you inhale. So that will have a very powerful effect on you for relaxation.

If you want to stimulate yourself and get going, you can breathe much faster. So what I've found is, throughout time, throughout millennia, these different cultures at different times, different peoples were discovering the same exact thing over and over. So it's very interesting that, right now, we have the science and the techniques and measurements to really prove what these people have been saying for so long.

GROSS: Why does the exhale quiet the system?

NESTOR: Because the exhale is a parasympathetic response. Right now, you can put your hand over your heart. And if you take a very slow inhale in, you're going to feel your heart speed up. As you exhale, you should be feeling your heart slow down. So exhaling relaxes the body. And something else happens when we take a very deep breath like this. So the diaphragm lowers. When we take a breath in. And that sucks a bunch of blood, a huge profusion of blood, into the thoracic cavity.

As we exhale, that blood shoots back out through the body. So the diaphragm is considered the second heart because it plays such a huge role in circulation. And it lowers the burden of the heart if we breathe properly and if we really engage the diaphragm. So these slow and low breaths, people should be practicing these as much as possible. This is the way your body wants to take an air.

GROSS: If you want to start breathing to calm yourself down, do you have any suggestions for the length of the inhale and the length of the exhale?

NESTOR: Sure. And this was a study I'd stumbled upon that's about 20 years old now, that some Italian researchers gathered a group of subjects. And they had them recite the Ave Maria, so the Catholic prayer cycle. And then they had them recite om mani padme hum, which is a Buddhist prayer. What they found is that it took about 5 1/2 seconds to recite each of these prayers, and then about 5 1/2 seconds to then inhale.

And so by breathing about 5 1/2 seconds out, 5 1/2 seconds in, they found that blood to the brain increased. The body entered this state of balance in which all of the organs, all of the system worked in harmony with one another. And they covered these people with sensors and were able to see all of this all on data sheets. And the study is widely available. So they later found that you don't need to really pray to get these benefits even though you can do that if you'd like.

But just by breathing at this rate, about 5 1/2 seconds in, 5 1/2 seconds out - don't worry if you're a second off, you know, the point is to relax yourself - you are able to get the perfect amount of air into your body and out of your body and really allow your body to do what it's naturally designed to do, which is function with the least amount of effort. And they've taught this breathing - psychiatrists have taught this breathing pattern to people with anxiety, depression, even 9/11 survivors who had this ghastly condition called ground-glass lungs. And it had significant effects on them by just breathing this way.

GROSS: You've said if you exhale longer than you inhale, that that can be very calming. So if both the inhale and the exhale are 5 1/2 seconds, you're not doing a longer exhale. Does that matter?

NESTOR: So the body wants to be balanced, right? We want sympathetic balance. We want parasympathetic balance. So just in regular day-to-day activity, you want to have that balance. Before you go to sleep, you can extend that exhale and become more relaxed. But I would not be extending that exhale before a meeting or before an important phone call.

So you can use these different tools to do different things. You can also inhale longer and exhale shorter if you want a little boost of energy. So the even-steven, like, the most balanced way of breathing that I've found after studying this stuff and talking to the leaders in the field was that five to six seconds in, five to six seconds out.

GROSS: My guest is journalist James Nestor, author of the new book "Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art." We'll talk more after we take a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF FRED KATZ'S "FOGGY, FOGGY DEW")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with journalist James Nestor, author of the new book "Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art." It's about the impact of how we breathe on our health, our sleep and our anxiety level. He investigates different ancient and new breathing techniques that can improve our health and expand our lung capacity. Nestor's previous book, "DEEP," was about free diving, in which divers go deep underwater, for up to 12 minutes, on one breath.

James, you know, in talking about breath and its impact on our health and our anxiety, you referred to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Without going into too much detail, can you just explain briefly what each of them are and why they're relevant to breath?

NESTOR: Sure. The sympathetic nervous system is the system that triggers a fight-or-flight reaction. So when we sense danger, the sympathetic nervous system switches on, floods our bodies with stress hormones and allows us to become meaner and leaner and to fight harder or to run really fast. That's what that does.

So the parasympathetic is the opposite. This is the side of the nervous system that triggers a rest-and-relax response. And we want to be in this state when we're eating food. Mostly, throughout the entire day, we want to be in a parasympathetic state. The problem is that, nowadays, all of us are kind of half-stressed. We're not really running away from a tiger or a lion or fighting for our lives, but we're not really relaxing, either. So we're staying in this gray zone, where during the night, we're half-awake and during our days, we're half-asleep.

So that's what I found was so interesting about breathing, is by just breathing, you can elicit these different nervous system states. So you can take command of something that was supposed to be autonomic. That's what it's called - the autonomic nervous system. But you can control it, and you can stress yourself out if you want, or you can relax yourself, just by breathing.

GROSS: What are the things that we typically do wrong when we breathe? Like, speaking for myself, I think I'm a very shallow breather when I'm not paying attention to my breathing. I think my kind of go-to state is just shallow breaths. So what's wrong with that?

NESTOR: Well, you can think about breathing as being in a boat, right? So you can take a bunch of very short, stilted strokes, and you're going to get to where you want to go. It's going to take a while, but you'll get there. Or you can take a few very fluid and long strokes and get there so much more efficiently. So your body doesn't want to be overworked all the time because, if it is, then things start to break down.

So you want to make it very easy for your body to get air, especially if this is an act that we're doing 25,000 times a day. So by just extending those inhales and exhales, by moving that diaphragm up and down a little more, you can have a profound effect on your blood pressure, on your mental state, on - even on longevity because so much of longevity is correlated with respiratory health and lung size.

GROSS: One of the trips that you took as part of your research was to Philadelphia to go to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and look at their skull collection with Dr. Marianna Evans. And she told you some fascinating things about how the skull has changed through human history - I mean through the evolution (laughter) of human history and how the nose has changed. So tell us some of the most interesting things you learned about how our nose evolved.

NESTOR: So - sure. You know, when I was first starting out researching this book, I thought I had a pretty good idea of where all of the research was going to lead me. I identified the leaders in the field, different areas I was going to go into.

But about six months into it, I realized that so much of what I had planned had to be thrown out because there was a much stranger story several layers deep. And it was the fact that so many of us are breathing poorly not because some sort of psychological problem, not because we're anxious, but because we can't, because our skulls have changed so much, especially in the last 400 years, that it's blocked our sinuses, and it's made us breathe more through our mouths.

And at the beginning, when I heard this, I didn't believe it. But I started talking to biological anthropologists who kept telling me the same thing over and over. They said if you take a skull that's a thousand years old and compare it to a new skull, that skull that's a thousand years old, there's a very good chance its teeth are going to be perfectly straight, whereas the modern skull, there's a very good chance its teeth are going to be very crooked.

So those perfectly straight teeth in that thousand-year-old skull, they would be the same teeth you'd find in a 10,000-year-old skull, hundred-thousand-year-old skull and on back. So just in the past 400 years, humans now have - about 90% percent of us - have some problems with our teeth that make them grow in crooked. And the reason is our mouths have grown so small that our teeth have nowhere to go. So they come in crooked. And another problem with having too small of a mouth is it also gives us too small of an airway to easily take air in and out.

So this was a story about evolution I never heard about in school, that I didn't think could be possibly true, unless you start looking at skulls. So she welcomed me, Marianna Evans, to go to the museum with the largest collection of preindustrial skulls. And time in, time out, didn't matter if the skulls were coming from Asia or Africa or South America, they all had straight teeth. And if you - again, if you look at a skull now, it's a very good chance it's going to have crooked teeth.

GROSS: So the obvious question is, why did skulls get smaller?

NESTOR: Well, I think that - you know, I had learned in school that evolution always meant survival of the fittest. But it doesn't; it means change. And life forms can change for the better or worse, and humans have certainly been changing in ways that are a detriment to our health. And this change, this catalyst that caused our mouths to go smaller, is tied to industrial food. It's not vitamins and minerals, as many people would suspect; it's chewing. The fact is, for the past 300 years, our food has been so processed, so soft, that we're not chewing anymore. So our mouths never quite develop right, which means our airways are clogged.

GROSS: Didn't Dr. Evans also tell you that as the human brain expanded, it left less room for the nose and the mouth?

NESTOR: This was about a million years ago, when we started processing foods, bashing prey against rocks. And we started cooking foods about 800,000 years ago, our brains started growing so rapidly, and they needed real estate. So they took it from the front of our faces, and they took it from our mouths. But these changes happened over tens of thousands of years, these morphological changes. So the changes that happen to our mouths happen very quickly, and we haven't been able to adapt fast enough to really acclimate to it.

So that is one of the reasons why we have so many chronic breathing problems. It's tied to the shrinking of the front of our faces.

GROSS: Well, let me take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist James Nestor, author of the new book "Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art." We'll talk more after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with journalist James Nestor, author of the new book "Breath," about what ancient forms of Eastern meditation as well as new science tell us about breathing and how, by controlling our breath through various techniques, we can improve our sleep, our health and decrease our anxiety.

So you had respiratory problems 10 years ago, when you started all this research into breathing techniques. Have your respiratory problems improved?

NESTOR: I have not had pneumonia since I've been using these techniques. I haven't had bronchitis. I've been breathing clearly through my nose. I've had one stuffed nose in the past year and a half, when I came down with a flu. So I'm not using that as confirmed data that says this stuff works; I'm saying that it worked for me.

And I just want to also make clear that I had no slant going into this world. My job, as a journalist who writes about science a lot, is to take all the data, talk to as many people as I can and come out with a very objective view of what's going on here. That's what I really tried to do with this book. So I don't want to be preaching slow breathing or heavy breathing or whatever. I wanted to present the facts and the studies and say, this is what's worked for people; this is what the science says.

But on a personal point, you know, I will say, you get pretty emotionally invested in the subject once you've been in it for years and years. And once you've seen these people so profoundly transformed, the more you dive into these worlds and become consumed by it, the more you want to feel these benefits and try to understand them in a certain way so you can relay that back to the reader.

GROSS: You know, so many doctors now are trying to figure out how the coronavirus works in the body and why it does the damage that it does and how they can help patients, you know, get over it and recover. And I know that some doctors now, instead of using respirators, are doing what's called proning, in which the person who is having the breathing problems because of the virus, instead of lying on their back, they lay on their side or, I think, on their chest, and that that seems to somehow make it easier for them to breathe. And I'm wondering if you have been reading about that and what your understanding of it is.

NESTOR: So about four weeks ago, five weeks ago, when a patient would have very severe symptoms of COVID, they would bring them in and lay them on their back and sometimes intubate them, and this seemed to work for a lot of the patients. But what they found more recently was that by laying them on their sides or on their stomachs, they could breathe so much better.

I found this was so interesting because 2,000 years ago, Chinese doctors prescribed side-sleeping as well. And then you have a cardiologist 80 years ago, 70 years ago, named Buteyko that asked all of his patients with pneumonia or other respiratory problems to always sleep on their sides. So he would even tape balls to their back so they could not sleep on their backs. So it seems like this science that has been around for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years just keeps popping up in these different ways.

And they've found that prone breathing - and they've even put some patients in a chair because they don't want them lying down - is extremely effective. And a lot of this has to do with how we breathe. When you take a big breath, your back is - more of the lungs are on your back, so your back is going to be expanding. Your chest expands a little bit, but most of that is happening at the back. So when you're lying someone on their backs, they're not going to be able to access their lungs as efficiently.

So it's simple physics. By flipping them around, they're going to be able to breathe better. So this was just another example. I was sending this back and forth to my father-in-law, who's a pulmonologist, been a pulmonologist for 40 years. And I was just like, it's more of the new science of a lost art here. We're just rediscovering all of these hacks that have been around for so long.

GROSS: I didn't realize your father-in-law was a pulmonologist, which means he works with patients who have lung issues. What does he make of the research that you present in the book? Is it consistent with what he's found as a doctor? And I'm wondering if he's adding anything to his toolbox (laughter).

NESTOR: All I can say is we've had some very lively Thanksgiving dinners together talking about this stuff over the years.

GROSS: (Laughter).

NESTOR: But at the beginning, he thought a lot of what I was uncovering - he was like, I never heard of that; I don't know about this. He's a pretty conservative guy in his beliefs, as far as medicine is concerned.

But over the years, one of the most fascinating things for me has been presenting him with more of this research, more of these studies, more of these investigators and scientists who have been saying the same stuff and watching him really change his mind. That's not what I set out to do. I want him to be critical and trust me. He was when I was bringing up a lot of these issues.

But watching him come around and get very exciting about using these other hacks, especially now, especially with COVID, when so many of us aren't breathing well - we've got masks on; we feel tightness in our chest - to be able to focus on our breathing and really allow us to be healthier and to have more of a calmer state of mind. So it's been a fantastic conversation over several years, and he's very excited about some of this really weird stuff I've uncovered.

GROSS: You know, your previous book was about divers who dive deep with one breath, and they can hold one breath for about 12 minutes. How do they train their lungs to expand enough to hold enough air to do all that on one breath?

NESTOR: So the world record is 12 1/2 minutes, the breath-hold. And most divers will hold their breath for eight minutes or seven minutes, which is still incredible to me. When I first saw this - this was several years ago. I was sent out on a reporting assignment to write about a free-diving competition. You watch this person at the surface take a single breath of air and completely disappear into the ocean, come back five or six minutes later. So

the way they were able to do this was by breathing.

Excerpt from:
How The 'Lost Art' Of Breathing Can Impact Sleep And Resilience - NPR